1985
by Carumati
Summary: Regression can't be stopped. What do you do if you know that you're going to die /get vaporized/ again? What happens when they finally catch you? Winston stumbles through life in a haze. Eventual O'Brien/Winston. Slash.
1. Self Reflection

Author's note: The fic picks up after canon… Oh man, I can't use fanfiction-speak anymore out of shame. Orwell, you're too good for this! Sadly, 1984 is a category. Heavily influenced by Chuck Palahnuik's _Fight Club_ in style and content but it's not a crossover. I'll only say this once- I don't own Orwell's brain baby nor do I own Palahnuik's brilliance. Thank you.

Warnings… eventual (subtle) slash (O'Brien/Winston) and mentions of sexual content.

_**1985**_

My name is Winston Smith and I'm 40 years old. I want to mention something.

The Vaporized don't disappear, they're relocated to another job, better pay, another living arrangement, one not even far from their Pre-Lesson period. A snake sheds skin, but the Party wants you to take it all off, skin, nails and hair, and stand as the bleeding mess, bleeding rivulets from muscles that cover bones all over the tile floors of Room 101. What you ripped off for the sake of the Party sags around your ankles like the regulation blue overalls, there's the hole for the mouth and the eyes. The Party doesn't want you to cry because that means that you're hurt and they don't want you to hurt and besides, mothers say that tears sting wounds.

Metaphor and Symbolism: I've been walking in the Woods of Crimethink whistling tunes about War against Eurasia along the road of Doublethink. The sun shined bright, bright, brightly and each cloud was the shape Big Brother and the secret to survival was to feel contentment.

Victory Gin works the best and I ran out of cigarettes yesterday. Victory Gin heats up when it touches the insides. The goal is to always sleep with a warm stomach, even if the next morning you wake up in a puddle of yesterday's meals, bile stinking up your loft and urine too, on the occasion. Not to mention of pain on all sides of your head, but Victory Gin is worth it.

Yesterday, I dreamed of monstrous rats, the larger breed of hairy monsters with yellow eyes. The dream's setting was in the morning, bright sun and Big Brother clouds- heavy black mustaches and ruggedly handsome features. In my dream, the rat chewed on an eyeball, the pupil was clear blue, cornflower blue. If this was a memory, I don't remember how old I was.

My sister's eye is blue. My sister's eye _was_ blue.

Beside that monster chewing out my sister's last parts was another monster gnawing at my mother's hand. There wasn't anything else but the hand left. If there was only my mother's index finger, would I still recognize her? Big Brother watched my mother's hand slowly being tugged down a drain by jaundiced teeth. Thankfully, I don't talk in my sleep.

The Big Brothers are watching. They're surveillance happens in present tense, never past, never future. Time is now; no one is allowed to think otherwise.

And the problem is you can't think like _that_. Nothing can be broadcasted. It might be better to not think of anything at all, the more you think, the more you broadcast and then _they_ see. The Party requires statues, not people. Everything in this world has to do with the intangible bleeding into realism. Freudian slip? The Thought Police says yes and off you go to the Ministry of Love. Oops, Mother, I said a bad word. Is there a case out there like me? Where a Vaporized who was re-educated have another regression or am I the only one? How stringently is the Party watching or has it been the same since I stepped back outside? If the Party knows about regression, then why does it even attempt Room 101? Was I even regressing?

I shouldn't be, I don't think. The unspoken word around the outer Party members is that Victory Gin prevents Crimethink. I drink all I can.

Victory Gin is better at home; my flat's dust clouds influence the taste. Drink it all the time without fail, morning, noon, afternoon, night, and the cycle repeats. I always poured a shot for Big Brother on the entranceway and the walls by the staircases and made sure to graciously toast him. Victory Gin warms better than any exercise or clothing, even the new gloves I bought which are getting worn down at the finger pads. Even the thought of Victory Gin brings a thrill. Victory for Insoc, Victory against Eurasia (since the beginning, we've always been fighting Eurasia. Never Eastasia, Eastasia is our friends, has always been our friends. Big Brother is forever just like Goldstein is forever.) Victory Gin works the best during Two Minutes of Hate; the hot feeling pits at the lower stomach and grows for every obscenities you shout. That makes Victory Gin a passable substitute for sex; Victory Gin is a substitute for other niceties too.

Except as an outlet for broadcasting, like that journal. I'd rather think that I was much eloquent in writing than ponderings. This is all my head, me, and mine own, private…

_This is usually where I stop thinking along that line and move onto other safer, less complicated topics._

The drink stuffs my eyes and mouth with cotton every single morning and is responsible to the pounding in my temples. The drink is night and day, life and death, it's what I swim in and it'll be what I'll stink like when _they_ finally decide to off me. A hot night, no clothes and no covers, arms flung above the head and legs sprayed, one hanging over the bed, then _they_'ll kick down my door and… that's the end. I'll ask them if I could masturbate one last time and ask that at the earliest, they could shoot me at my peak: everyone should die like that.

I hope no rats eat me.

Death is a combination of fetid smells. Gin stinks to the high skies. Cigarettes smokes are just as bad. There are smells of fear: sweat, urine, feces. Finally, there are the smells of a rotting body. That'll stink up the entire Victory Mansions Complexes on this block. Victory Mansions. Victory Road. Victory Lane. Victory Street. Victory Boulevard. Victory Square.

Victory is Sex, Victory is Peace, _War is Peace_, War is Sex. Everything is linked together by words but the strings are like spider's silk, it's only visible if you tilt your head in a certain way. I'm the only one who sees on the road through the masses of Proles who smell worse than Gin. But then I think- somebody else, one other living person, even a Prole, has to figure out that something is missing.

Gin can't hide everything. There has to be a fundamental human instinct that should be screaming that something's wrong, this instinct can't be repressed but it can be ignored but this instinct will be screaming so loud that one day, its voice blends into yours and Boom. Vaporization. The more time this element is missing, the more the human mentality becomes dependent upon the Big Brothers in the clouds. The birth of a mob, I tend to avoid them. The effects of war suppress morality, which is why war must be eternal, when it shouldn't. Big Brother is forever.

Victory tastes and smells so horrible, it's doublethink- everything is doublethink.

I love O'Brien. I love Big Brother.

A year has passed since Room 101. A year ago was my first day at my new job. My name is Winston Smith and I am 40 years old.

"Hi, Winston." I sat down. My job is boring, but at least my co-workers never looked too deep, they're pretty boring too. Not like: We would love to see who you are, Winston, and not what you are. You are not what you drink. You are not what you drink.

But, I sometimes wished I was what I drink, then I wouldn't be counting my days till my death. Nobody can shoot Victory to death.

A year passed since I was Vaporized. Despite the fact that I feel like an old man, my body seemed to be regaining its youth. Was it due to meals or emotions? My skin was darker, smoother, my eyes not so sunken in, I was growing hair, and my varicose ulcer wasn't a bother. I ate better; I felt happier; I loved Big Brother. Love is such a powerful emotion. I used to love Julia.

Julia still works in the same building, just a different department. Like me, she's also getting fatter, only slightly around the legs and arms. I watched her stomach expanded greatly like somebody had pumped air, or a baby, into it. Then one day, she was thin again and months later, her stomach began growing again.

I told her that becoming a Carrier for the Party won't raise her position in the eyes of the Party and she's going to die early anyways. She was pretty frank, "Don't associate with me. You're still a traitor to Ingsoc and once I get enough proof, I'm turning you in." and blew cigarette smoke in my face. She gave me a look of dislike and walked away.

Later, I had a nightmare of her on O'Brien, silent as a statue. Up, down, up, down… I knew that she was enjoying it because her eyes were closed. Doing it. Doing it. Doing it.

Being a Carrier was a recently introduced idea among the inner and outer Party Members. One woman was to bed with as many men as she could, as many babies as she could accomplish. Of course, this would all be systematic and preplanned, and the general consensus when one looked at a Carrier was, "Oh, that poor lady, giving her entire body as a noble sacrifice."

This would be the only way Julia was able to have sex once every nine months. But I'd wager that she often came back to the same man the day after claiming that, "it didn't work right the last time" and "oh, I know this is so hard on my very being but I have to so if you can just take down your pants and we'll try something new, how about I warm you up first? Fellatio or a massage?"

She said that "Fucking as a job is better than any other job you can hope for," and then mocked my own sex drive. I told her to shut the fuck up.

If she kept talking like this, she wouldn't last longer than I and I know that _my_ days are numbered.

I want to find out one thing before I die: What makes the Proles what they are. How can they react, through what color shades do they view Ingsoc, how were they altered so that the Party saw them as relatively harmless? I'm positive that they were altered, likely at birth, either through ice picks through the eyes or chemicals during nursing. If it's through chemicals, Proles and Party members aren't actually all that different in their methods of being subjugated through Suggestion. _They_ don't watch the Prole's closely and nobody suffered from a true mob rebellion since the beginning of the Revolution.

The Proles don't do _anything,_ even when missiles come.

And today… Now… Not the past, not the future, but now…

The road from the Chestnut Tree to my flat was broken and riddled with holes that could swallow people whole. In the direction of the Party Member residential area, the holes were filled half-hazard with the rubble that the missiles had hit. My head is pleasant haze, a bit misty, but I can still see. I also have to really concentrate on the grip of my right hand; it's still holding the half-empty bottle of Victory Gin. The waiter has always been so nice; I think he knows that I'm going to die soon too.

And what can be a better use of this knowledge than to drown myself in warmth?

It smells like death today, because the body clean-up job from last week's missile attack wasn't completely done. Apparently, someone forgot to clean up a nearby shed that had a woman and a baby girl and their scent lingered. It was pretty obvious that the rats reached them some time after they died or maybe as they were dying. The woman wasn't missing a hand though and the baby wasn't missing an eye. Life went on but the smell of death never disappears on a day like this.

The air is pretty hot, muggy, like a million bodies pressed upon you and someone's sweaty armpit was shoved into your face at the exact moment you had to breathe. The clouds in the sky look down with the face of Big Brother. I wonder if they saw Julia sleeping with O'Brien.

I stagger down the street in the most straight drunken manner I can achieve.

_Under the spreading chestnut tree_

_I sold you and you sold me-_


	2. Riots on the Path

Author's note: I'm trying to stretch the story to ten chapters or more because, frankly, it's ridiculous that all my stories haven't reached the double digits yet. Though that _The Lexicon: Plot Snorkacks_ collection might… one day.

Warnings… eventual (subtle) slash (O'Brien/Winston) and mentions of sexual content.

_**1985**_

My world shakes. Missile explosions chase one another in my head, creating myriad of colors that I haven't seen in a long time. I take a minute to enjoy the view, but my world shakes once again, this time as a force that pushes me onto my stomach. Someone is slapping my back hard enough to flatten my ribs into pancakes.

I cough and taste the blood that has been flying out of my mouth, landing a respectful distance away. Better jump, I want to say, red embellishments are coming your way, decorating stained and dusty shoes. The same force spins me around so that I'm staring at the sky and its Big Brothers. The waiter from the _Chestnut Tree_ sits me up and shuffles around and I sit there, perfectly like a statue, trying to regain feeling in my face and trying to remember just… what… happened…

"Drunken fight with an Outer Party member," the waiter says, "you aren't held accountable."

How reassuring. With whom?

"3571 Parsons." Oh. I haven't seen Parsons since my last job but it's pretty easy to recall him: tubby man with fair hair and a frog-like face, the son of a whale trying to masquerade as a human being. I run a tongue over my teeth, taking inventory. I can't put weight on the toes of my right foot and my head still aches but my muscles are sore, satisfyingly so.

Parsons is only a few steps away, he's soaked from water, sweat, and blood, and he looks nervous. He's sitting cross-legged looking sheepish; I take the moment to analyze the damage I've done to him. Half of his hair is gone, swollen eyes, busted lip, he's cradling his left arm to his side but other than that he looks fine. His rolls of fat that cradle his body like a bracer and a shield seems to finally found a self-utilizing role. I don't help him up. He's much fatter than I last remembered. He doesn't recognize me.

"Comrade." He says as he stands, his body spilling out of his blue overalls. His grey shirt acts like a bag that's straining and about to burst at the seams.

I make a pitiful attempt to hide behind the waiter and fail. I'm trying to remember what started the fight, as far as I know, he jumped me, howling in rage. Then I shoved him back and grabbed a handful of his skin right below his eye, pushed and pulled. Then I see the ground, the sky, the clouds, Parson's angry red face, his mouth spitting into my eyes, all in that order. Parsons probably just finished his exercise quota for the year.

He licks his lips, nervous, and says, "Allow me to walk you to the Victory Mansion entrance." His sweaty hands suddenly gripped my sides and I'm crushed in a warm embrace and lost in a sea of scents that define a man as a man who hasn't washed because he was unable to fit into a tub. His hands palm my scalp and he shudders down a sob and his rolls of fat undulate close to my body.

I don't know what prompts him and a list pops into my head as to why people would think that by telling me their problems, I can suck away their troubles: the effect of the perfect stranger, my overall non-aggressive attitude, Parson's apologetic mannerisms, the fact that I'm there, the fact that he needs to relieve his inner conflicts. This is borderline pre-Vaporized actions but it isn't yet. Most Party members will never be friendly, but Parsons' drunk and that's what's separating him from me. I'm always partly sober, ever since the regression. He tells me his life story, most of which I already know about, all of it which revolves around his family. Parsons dominates the entire conversation. He talks of his beloved children, the little fanatics, proudly, demons of his blood. He drifts to his wife, claiming that he could've never suspected Mrs. Parsons of _crimethink_ but thanks to his son and daughter, he won't be suffering under the care of a traitor anymore.

I swallow the urge to tell him that Mrs. Parsons purposely ruined her own plumbing just to get me into the house to distract her children. It's like pulling an innocent bystander from the sidewalk to your front to block two bullets intended for you.

"Women are all very devious, Comrade. I would've never guessed. When I first met her, she was so beautiful and enchanting, I should've known right from the start." Parsons sighs, his nostrils flutter like laundry hanging from the line. "As the years went by, her beauty only grew and grew until only my two young ones could see through her."

As far as I can recall, Mrs. Parsons was a skeleton dipped in Friday's lunch gruel. The grey variety.

We part ways.

Parsons is the classic case of _doublethink_: he doesn't love his wife but years of companionship have made him close to that woman, which obviously cannot happen.

Of course Mrs. Parsons was the devious traitor, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Goldstein. Of course Parsons' children will be model citizens when they grow up, extolling the virtues of the Party. Of course, within five years, Parsons' children will turn in their morbidly obese father for _crimethink _of some sort_._

We part ways.

I head off to the direction of a monstrous Prole woman as solid as a Norman pillar hanging laundry, whipping half-cleaned diapers into the wind. Her arms are an angry red and thick as launchers and she's whipping the life out of those decrepit cloths that probably have already gone through five babies a day. She whips to the tempo of the tune that I've heard so many times around London.

_It was only an 'opless fancy,_

_It passed like an Ipril dye,_

_But a look an' a word an' the dreams-_

And then she sees me and she stops.

I don't know where she could've recognized me, I saw her through a window back in the Pre-Vaporized days, singing the exact same song. Perhaps a spy for _them_? I wouldn't have believed it until I realized that old, tepid, antique shop owners could suddenly pull a gun to the back of your neck. _They'll shoot me in the back I don't care they'll shoot me in the back I don't care they'll shoot me in the back I don't care down with Big…_

In my Pre-Vaporized days, I almost fell in love with her due to what she symbolized.

Wait, wait, she symbolized something?

She's a mountain of mass and muscles due to labor, her shoulders remind me of horizons. Brown bits from the diapers fly off and land onto her body and into her mouth when she sang. Her voice is different from the telescreens which displays itself as a cracked and braying man. The telescreens' voice are so covered that perhaps the only thing one can tell by listening is that its impersonal and it belongs to a man. If there was a perfect word I can find to describe the voice, it would be 'yellow'. But the Prole's voice is guttural; vibrating in a way that you know your chest could feel if she sang just a bit louder.

I used to sing small tunes with my mother, clapping my hands to the lullaby _There was a little Dutch boy that went into a store. He bought a pound of sausages and laid them on the floor._ It's a pity that Party members aren't allowed to sing since songs are designed to keep a mind entertained and occupied.

She's still staring with beady little eyes; I can tell how coarse her skin of her arms is from my distance. She reminds me a swollen, over ripened fruit, the ones that taste off when you bite into them. She slowly lifts a finger to her lips _shhhhhh._

What is that suppose to mean? Big Brother or Goldstein? Comrade or Traitor? The Prole woman whips out the diaper again, pegs them on the line, and kneels back to the washer at her feet and the cycle repeats- whip, peg, washer, whip, peg, washer, and the entire time she's singing.

I have no idea what is going on and on some cases, I've learned to accept the facts that were given to me at face value… but then came those times at night where the room was suffocating and I didn't know what exactly was the reason why I couldn't sleep but I knew that it must be big because this was the **n**th night since Room 101 and the feeling were so bad. I slipped the blanket over my face so the telescreen wouldn't see and covered my eyes with my hands and begged… begged my body for some decent rest because there was no way that anyone could function after experiencing this torture. Then I had the dream of my mother getting eaten by rats and my insomnia never bothered me again.

I want to scream _I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY._

That's when my regression started as well as my beginning incredulity with Julia's case.

Julia, I hazard a guess, was also a symbol but in her case, she represented the ideal women, youthful, supple, fertile, yes, definitely fertile, still fertile, despite all the woes she's probably have been experiencing with pregnancy. After Vaporization, I tried to finish _that_ business I still had with her, feeling a vague sense of disgust whenever she looks at me, I could feel her disgust at me. Julia had been a reminder of the Pre-Vaporized days of _crimethink_. After the dream, Julia morphed into Sex-obsessed; I think it's a disease. These days, I always associate Julia with the image of Julia bouncing on O'Brien with her eyes closed.

Once, during her third trimester of her first pregnancy, she happily waved me over on the other side of the square where she was sitting on the corner of some rubble, I would think that her joy came from either medicine associated with the doctors of a Carrier or Pregnancy hormonal moods. I was careful not to sit so that our thighs were touching, in case it brought up memories of intimacy and became the harbinger of another round of angry-sex. Julia was in her third trimester; she was polishing off the last of her cigarette and she said, "Winston. The epitome of vices is in my hand. They aren't vices, however, because Symes told me that vices are near _crimethink_ and their very definition means to go against rules. But since vices are freely given and expected to be used, they can't be vices!" She slurred and jolted through that speech in a train wreck and then extinguished her cigarette on my overalls.

Smith you idiot, get away from her.

I got up slowly and backed away from her until there were at least five people between me and her, making sure that any spies or watchers or cameras or Big Brother clouds could see my actions at her obvious _crimethink_; I'd say that all of this is due to the Carrier's medicines. But when all her inhibitions are rendered moot, is this what she thinks about?

Julia will be going to go back to Room 101. Julia will be disappearing again. Julia might be a spy for one of _them_, trying to gauge my reactions to that statement. And I completely failed because I didn't report her. What if she wasn't a spy? What if she was?

_They sye that you can always forget;_

_They twist my 'eartstrings yet!_

I'm walking past the Prole woman as collected as I'll ever be. I'm at peace with myself and I'm flaunting my peaceful demeanor in her face. Proles aren't truly human, she'll know that, and I'm so much better than her I can make up better, nonsensical songs than the Party for her to sing. As I walk closer, I can feel my organs rattling in my rib cages.

…She wasn't singing the tune right, the lyrics are mixed up. I stop as she pins up another diaper on the line; her back is to me and I could clearly see her skin flaking off in angry bits of red at her nape. She's flaunting her knowing-ness into my own face with her behind clearly pointed in my direction.

Multiple voices are echoing in my head.

_Here comes a candle to light you to bed, _

_Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!_

I pick at my ear with my fingers and realize that the distant roar was a few streets over. The noise is a crowd people, shouts, yells, stamping feet and a chant that was too much to decipher. The Prole woman is still concentrated in her work, humming a repeating motive, unconcerned. The roars grow louder and she hums louder. _I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY_.

I force myself to forget about the Prole woman.

"Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!"

_They_ can't indict me for being curious. I see other Party members running to the scene from the Victory Mansions, expressions in various states of minds. Sweat is dripping onto the roads; I'm already out of breath, wheezing like someone beyond my age. I recognize people in the running Party group: Julia… Parsons… All of us run to the Chestnut Tree Café.

The mob is a sea of Prole heads and dispersed hands and fire, chanting. This mob was unlike any previous because of its sheer power and its longevity. Most mobs were usually brawls that dispersed within seconds. This one is self-fueling. It roars with a ferocity that's crazed and more Party members join the Proles.

This never happened before.

The mob circles around its center. The Party members are being drawn in, like bees to a flower as it blooms outward, and then shrink back, then back out, and over and over, spinning slowly and you can imagine invisible tentacles coming out to snatch their prey dressed in blue overalls. Julia is sucked in; arm first, then leg, then her swollen stomach. The shouts get louder as more Party member joined them. Party members don't associate with Proles; it's an unspoken rule. But here… You can't tell them apart; they mix together into an incoherent mess.

I stick close to the walls of the Café on its top step and watch the ritual progress. I'm the only one that does. I look deeper into the crowd, people lash out at one another with one arm over their face and another clawing and ripping, their bodies lean back and lunged and pushed. People stab one another with abandon, in, out, in, out: up, down, up, down. Prodigious amounts of blood flies freely in the air. The mob shudders in a way that I know it has experienced transcendental bliss.

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

And at the pinnacle of chaos, I look up just in time to see a black shadow descend on the crowd.

My last thought before the missile landed is: Big Brother isn't happy anymore.


	3. You are here

Author's note: It would be so awesome if this fic had double digit number of chapters and zero reviews; I once 'read' a work like that, but said fic was a disaster turning into a snowball toeing the edge of a cliff that gives way to a sea of fic-eating sharks.

Warnings… eventual (subtle) slash (O'Brien/Winston) and mentions of sexual content.

_**1985**_

You wake up from a dream.

Pre-Vaporized days are ranked at the top floor of the Victory Mansions while present day is a floor below the boiler rooms. The past has more color than the present, ten times more. I could do many other compare and contrast. Flowers to concrete, fingers to toenails, I can go on. The past had the private room where Julia and I laid there on lazy days, basking in the hazy lights of the sun. I was lying at her side; her arms were cradling her head, I could see hair growth at her armpits. As I drew little shapes of clouds into her skin with my finger, she squirmed.

"We live in a four-part world where three parts implement their Idealism and the fourth part is ravaged by governments' war." She had applied paint onto her face, making her less weary than she appeared.

My hand traveled down; I applied slight pressure. Julia started to breathe faster. "I wonder how it would be like to have sex with Big Brother?" She asked quietly to the air. Despite her efforts, I could hear every word clearly.

My hand stopped.

But that was all a dream of the past. What matters is the present, now, now, now.

You are at your useless job.

Objective of the day is to decide whether meat should start to be rationed. I don't even know why I'm here; it's pretty obvious that they really don't need my input at all. There are days where there is nothing in the conflict of interests and nothing to debate over. The Party doesn't need twelve people to decide on these sorts of things but yes, everyone is sitting in a circle and having a civilized, slow-paced conversation. We sit on navy, plastic, chairs that are too small for our bodies and press too much on our tailbones. Like perfect, high-classed, English gentlemen. Like sodding naïve sheep having nothing to do but eat grass before they get slaughtered.

I'm tempted to make a sheep sound. Baah.

None of the sheep even suspect that their masters are planning to make lamb supreme chops. I know, ergo I'm not a sheep. What does that make me? One of us in the group documents the entire conversation on a typewriter; I bet he's an Inner Party member. His black hair is parted in a clean life across his scalp. I place my input into the group from time to time, sweet sound bites that are mild but insightful. I don't attract suspicion. I stare at the mauve walls till my eyes cross.

Rivers-Sheep says, "Everyone knows that Proles are not truly actual people, the buggers won't even notice if we cut it down till they're chewing on nothing but brown lettuce." He's pompous, none of us particularly likes him but he doesn't know that.

Everyone could hear the typewriter clicking, in the gloom. N.O.T. T.R.U.L.Y. A.C.T.U.A.L. P.E.O.P.L… A sheep sneezes and then profusely apologizes. Another sheep has developed a nervous tick at his jaw line. He'll be gone within the week. The flock of sheep is caught between wanting to fill the silence but not knowing what to say.

This is about as boring as watching ice melt on a winter night.

McConnell-Sheep says, "I agree." He has an unnaturally high pitch, he's sweating like a pig, he wears his glasses askew, he has a receding hairline and he's only 32.

The rest of us cast a vote, a unanimous agreement by a herd of sheep, trying to figure out whether we should chase the little red-breasted robins off our pasture or not. I wipe the sweat from my palms onto my overalls. I place my hands on the cool metal legs of my chair. The meeting is finished within fifteen minutes. For the rest of the day, we sit at our cubicles, staring at nothing, pretending to be occupied with our computers. None of us wants to talk because we know that someone here is from _them _and one small action will proverbially send a bullet to the back of the talker's head. I pick at my teeth and then at the skin underneath my fingernails. I stare at mauve walls till my eyes cross and tear. I'm calm and collected; I'm so calm and collected that I'm making poetry in my head.

_Little cute sheep all in a line, _

_Waiting for the knife to chop their heads_

_Little stupid sheep cannot comprehend…_

_Blood pools and then the sheep are all dead._

It's a horrible poem and it grated my self-worth.

This happens day after day after day.

You find yourself at the Two Minutes of Hate.

Everybody here is a dumb sheep. Goldstein is the wolf. Big Brother is the wolf in sheep's clothing. I scream the worst insults I can think of at the lithograph of the foreign soldiers. Behind the soldiers were hills and hills of Oceania's women and children. I throw my worst pens at Goldstein's hideous face and stamp my foot down, yelling obscenities. I let my body run its course on a learned response; I think this is all therapeutic. Other people run up to attack the wall and the picture, which was slowly zooming in upon a particular face. I see a sneering Mongolian facial structure; the eyebrows come together in a fantastic display of evil incarnate. Other people scream behind their desks like cornered animals, spitting cats.

As Big Brother's face dominates the screen, I allow my face to morph in a way that it looks like it has finally achieved rapture and enlightenment. I lower my head and raise my arms, cupping the air in supplication, in complete worship. I give long, heavy, romantic sighs.

I'm not overdoing it at all.

Weeks ago, you woke up inside the Chestnut Tree Café hours after the missile annihilated most of the Proles in the mob.

The waiter woke me up, "Some glass had been lodged in your face but I had kindly taken them out for you. It will create an interesting scar, no doubt, but it won't ruin your visage so much to fuss over."

I didn't really care but I pretended to because there was a telescreen on my left.

For a moment, the waiter scrutinized me so closely that I could see the hair on the mole on his left cheek and another above his eyebrow. I knew the waiter was an Inner Party member, a spy. I knew he was watching me and reporting every time I dared to even blink in his presence. The waiter was as pure as Mr. Charrington, the antique dealer, which was not at all. I still kept my regular hours at the Café; I still drink the same amount of Victory Gin as before. Which therein lied the problem, because I was not descending into that 'destructive behavior' that was common for Vice-users. I was supposed to drink more and more and more and more. I developed tolerance to the gin, I kept sobriety.

I got off the floor and wiped dust from my overalls and peeked outside. Carnage, body parts, blood. I decide to go out the backdoor unless I wanted to trip and get a face full of whatever was out there.

I knew that tomorrow, the telescreen will document an unfortunate occurrence- a missile strike from Eurasia… or was it Eastasia… that killed so many people. There were no out of control Proles, there was no riot. This is our enemy's doing and dastardly plot. But don't worry; Big Brother will always save us all. Anybody who attempted to say otherwise will soon become an _unperson_.

You are walking home.

(She's a spy; she knows it and you know it.) There's only one solution left: take another path: avoid the red-armed, robust, Prole woman. At all costs.

You wake up in the middle of the night with your own hand around your neck and you wondered what could have you dreamed that was so unspeakable that your body decided that death was a better fate. All you remember is that two and two equals to five.

You stare intently at a poster of Big Brother.

You look up at the clouds and wonder if Big Brother is watching you.

You are eating lunch on a Monday.

You are eating lunch on a Tuesday.

The porridge is tasteless, so tasteless that it numbs my senses into a dull dullness. I'm healthy only on the outside, inside, I feel so old, twice my age, and just a bit more restless. I'm a bagful of dichotomies.

I'm not the dark skin I wear.

I'm not the malicious soup bread I eat.

I'm sitting with three of my co-workers. None of us are willing to start a conversation.

You wake up from a dream. Again.

Hangovers are never pleasant. I forgot to drink two glasses of water before I went to bed, battling dehydration lessens the headaches. I rub my forehead, turn to my side, back against the telescreen, and lick my lips. The taste of the imaginary chocolate lingers on my tongue, dark, sensitive, rich, sensual. Food these days are never as divine as chocolate.

I used to steal chocolate from my mother and sister; I ate chocolate recently with Julia before I was Vaporized.

In my dream, O'Brien was feeding me chocolate by hand, piece by piece. I eagerly accepted all of them. The surrealism surrounding the moving image made my memory vague and puzzling, fuzzy around the edges and even then, not so much resolution. The chocolate melted on the tongue and on the roof of the mouth. It tasted so powerful. In my dream, I had closed my eyes and sighed in content.

O'Brien was a younger version of himself, darker hair, less facial lines. His eyes were the same. He still held the same magnanimous personality and strong voice, which was the only reason I could identify him as who he is.

O'Brien told me, "You and I shall meet in a place where there is no darkness."

The statement tickled my fancy because I couldn't see past the chaise I was lying on and O'Brien. Everything else was darkness.

In my dream, O'Brien lied.


	4. Problems with Proles

Author's note: Palahniuk trumps over me in every aspect of writing because he knows everything about the strangest topics like soap and movie reels. Orwell is Orwell and will always be Orwell.

Warnings… eventual (subtle) slash (O'Brien/Winston) and mentions of sexual content.

_**1985**_

I gave the self-sustaining mob, the only riot that's ever made Big Brother shuffle in his poster uncomfortably, a nickname: the Wormhole-mob, because everyone is drawn towards it like pitiful fish to a lure, a little squirmy worm on a hook. My mother used to describe how to fish before she got eaten. Stick a worm to a hook, tie the hook to a string, tie the string to a stick, let the string fly, and wait for the fish to come. The missile launched by Big Brother only brought temporary peace to London. A month later, another Wormhole-mob emerged on the other side of the Ministry of Love. This mob was two times bigger. This time, they were chanting, "Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!" Another rocket bomb fell; more people disappeared, but not everybody.

The telescreen refused to report it again but there was no mistaking the shake that rattled all of his meager belongings off his desk. Everyone heard the chant and through some sort of communication however obscure, everyone knows. But the problem was that _they_ couldn't target everyone. _They_ operate singly and they attack singly. Another Wormhole-mob appeared on the east side; the rocket bomb quelled them. The Proles were learning swarm tactics.

Excellent. We're all going to die.

Nobody knew how the mob was formed; nobody could even discuss it. Society refused to acknowledge and to change and life went on in static motion, shades of grey and off navy of the Party uniform. The telescreen determinedly kept the topic onto food production efficiency, which had gone up by twenty point four-five percent since the last harvest. Nobody said anything. Everything was normal except… except the small movements that _they _should be able to detect, the changes in routine and behavior. When the day was over and everybody headed home, people started to hesitate at the exit doors.

Do you want to leave? Will the next riot be close to the Victory Mansions? Can you resist the allure?

The people that hesitated at the doors were gone the next day, but not all of them. _They _couldn't target everyone.

Nowadays, I drink at work and nobody calls it up on me. I drink at the Café. I drink at home.

And I ponder.

The Proles didn't rebel against the Party structure because they satisfied their feral urges through Patriotism and Hate. The two might not have been enough to make them fully content, but it was enough for them to stop questioning themselves seriously, not really that they could question themselves properly at all. The Proles all shared one brain. That would also be why these present mobs are so successful if mobs had a goal to reach. But why now, why not before? Was this the personification of the quote, '_it will only be a matter of time?'_

But the fact that we're living in the 'Now' era means that the _time_ has gone and the Proles are finally stepping up to protest. …No, they're not protesting. This is a way for those animals to relieve stress, the aftermath of a drunken brawl with Parsons, the aftermath of a killing frenzy.

Tell me: how does it feel to have blood on your hands that don't belong to you? Euphoria? Do you know what euphoria means? Don't you have this urge to experience it again? Isn't it addictive? If you can't describe an emotion does it mean that it doesn't exist?

No. -My comrades: this is why _newspeak_ will collapse.

Yesterday evening, another Wormhole-mob broke out and I couldn't escape. Today, I limp down a long hallway and try to forget. I can't see through my left eye and my tongue has a habit of probing the hole in my cheek. Today, I smile at every opportunity to show off my wonderful bloodstained pearls. I can't think linearly. I honestly try to forget about the entire ordeal. It's not easy to push the memory to the back of your mind; you have to fill the void with other memories- Julia's sex drive, starving in an unknown room in the Ministry of Love, drinking gin at the Café, the sentient mob, my mother and sister getting gnawed on by rats, I almost suffered the same fate.

"Winston Smith, just the man I was looking for."

(Mrs. Parsons and her children, Syme's fanaticism to the science of language, Julia's pale body…)

O'Brien step out of the corner with a benign smile on his face, the smile doesn't fit. He hasn't changed at all. At one point in my life, I had wondered whether most Inner-Party members existed to spy on the Outer. I ask him if he was going to shoot me in the back of my head.

O'Brien laughs, "We never kill those who expect or want to be killed, Winston, I thought I told you that."

I'm going back to the Ministry of Love to be reformed again. I won't say that out loud.

O'Brien is staring at my face, mapping out every single color of the rainbow that's apparent, the greens and reds and purples. I feel uncomfortable. With his eyes alone, he forces me to recall the fourth Wormhole-mob that I have shoved over the cliff of my mind to fall into endless abyss.

I blame my thought process of non-sequitors on the Victory Gin.

The Wormhole-mob was so big that its concentrated circle stretched from one sidewalk to the other. I edged around a roaring crowd. An arm from the mob stretched out from the sea of bodies and took a hold of my collar and dragged me into the second layer. Bodies pressed together and rubbed all sorts of bodily fluids upon clothes; I tasted piss on a woman's shirt sleeve. On my left was a Prole, on my right was a Party member, and this mob is one brain, one feeling, and one power holder. They fought without abandon at fellow comrades, arms flailed, some held bludgeoning instruments. A hand grabbed my hair, another punched at my eye, another gave me a kick in the ribs, another stepped on my knee; I began to fear for my life. The sounds escalated, I lost my breath when someone did the bastardized version of the Heimlich maneuver on my solar plexus. I ran into another fat, singed, smelly body.

I heard windows break; I heard doors give way; I heard people screaming. People ran into a one-story community center where Party members used to play chess. "Steamer! Steamer! Steamer! Steamer!" Wanting the missile, the rocket bomb, the flashes and shockwave, the destruction of the roads and the edifices; they wanted death. They begged for it, they chanted.

I needed to get out.

I pushed and shoved and squeezed my way into fresh air and I ran. Just as my fingers touched the bricks of a building on the other side of the street, Big Brother answered their call.

O'Brien is wrong. Those that wanted to be killed will be killed.

"Hate moments are a way to keep the Party united; its complete shit," Julia once said, reclining on our bed on the top floor of the antique store, "They're forcing dolls and sheep to worship a man on a poster whom they can't even fathom. They know the HOW but not the WHY."

"Did you get into a fight, yesterday?" O'Brien mildly asks.

Drunken brawl, I reply. I want to throw up my lunch of bean curds and assorted vegetables onto his pristine shoes, I want to punch through his mouth until his teeth gave way; I want him to change.

"The Party justifies their rule. You justify anarchy." Julia once said, "You figure it out. It should be easy."

O'Brien takes me by the shoulders and leads me further down the halls. I shrink back but he compensates and pulls me closer. His arms are like thick kudzu vines wrapping around a house. We end up in an area of the building where there is no one but us, in this light filled darkness, oblivion. My head spins. "The problem with the government, Winston, is that we claim to treat everyone as though they aren't humans, but we still Vaporize them like they are. Our claims speak of one aim and our actions claim otherwise." O'Brien says, "We take special attention to each and every individual and then we carefully convert them or annihilate them."

O'Brien smells of coffee and chocolate.

The red-armed Prole woman I followed yesterday still smelled of baby excrement. I'm more attracted to her than I'll ever be with O'Brien. She gives birth to the future and watched over them by cleaning their diapers with her angry-scarlet arms. O'Brien has nothing on her. I keep my mouth shut and wonder how soon I'm going to die.

The kudzu vines loosen their hold and reluctantly withdraw. I step back till I'm comfortable. I ask how long till I die?

"It doesn't matter," he says. He smiles benignly; I smile back and show teeth; he stops smiling.

I leave him. Back out the hallway, into the main lobby, sequins and broken light bulbs. I see Julia, pale, sweet Julia, without the bump on her stomach. The skin on her arms reminds me of water droplets on windows and she's thicker and fatter. Within a few years, I anticipate, though I don't know if I'll be alive to see her turn into a rolling mass of baby factory.

The timing isn't correct though... Miscarriage, I suppose, not enough nutrition, too much stress. Too much sex? No worries, she's nothing but resilient and determined. I wonder whose baby she lost. Julia is talking to a portly, swarthy, Outer Party member with a healthy mustache and a full head of hair. She's leaning against the wall and cocking her head slightly down and to the right in a coquettish manner. Her hands are on his chest and moving down; he is eyeing her with slight interest. Julia pretends not to see me. The other people pretend not to see her. She is a Carrier, after all.

I walk outside and search for the red-armed Prole woman. It takes me an half an hour of faking interest in multiple appliance stores and examining at the displays at the windows before I spot her. She's bustling down a broken lane, hips waggling as if they were caught in a balancing act over her legs. In her arms were broken down kitchenware. There are two kids, barely old enough to walk, one wants to be carried. The Prole woman has stringy, black hair that frames her face like sunlight does to the sun. She's wearing a thick yellow apron with brown speckled over. Her rotund figure does not indicate pregnancy though. She's happily singing.

_Under the spreading chestnut tree_

_I sold you and you sold me;_

_There lie they, and here lie we_

_Under the spreading chestnut tree._

I'm surprised that the Party hasn't been churning out new jingles yet.

I keep my 'conformist' expression on my face, where my eyes are glazed over from drinking gin and I have become introverted and Zen-like, only to come out to give adoring looks at the posters of Big Brother. I have decided that the reason why _they_ haven't re-Vaporized me was because I wasn't poisoning the thoughts of my comrades.

I try to imagine a future that would exist if I had inconspicuously dropped my journal into someone's hands. There might have been a rebellion, a good and proper one, under the banner of Anti-Government since the word 'Democracy' now holds negative connotations. The long slogan would read:

_Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows._


	5. Flaunting and Eating

Author's note: Top movies of summer 2010: _Toy Story 3_ and _Inception_. PWNAGE! On another note- sometimes, when I'm trying to visualize this story, I imagine Julia to be Megan Fox, Wilson to be Pat Monahan and O'Brien to be George Clooney… I know that's not possible, but humor me for a bit.

Warnings… eventual (subtle) slash (O'Brien/Winston) and mentions of sexual content.

_**1985**_

After Julia's miscarriage, it was much easier to spot a Carrier within a crowd, especially during mealtimes. Flushed cheeks, meat on bones, and the tang of pregnancy pheromones in the air which were, according to the book, tasteless; when they eat, they eat two plates worth, not one. Their plates are full of colorful nutriments, not dilapidated vegetables that had seen better day's years ago, real meats and red beans. They glow so much with health that they stick out of the crowd like a dandelion on a crosswalk. The Party had put up an ad campaign encouraging us to revere the Carriers.

"They sacrifice their body for the sake of Big Brother, we must be grateful." Pictures of pregnant women popped up on the telescreen with faces of hardened determination, their faces full of sweat and exhaustion as if they had done mile runs. A two minute video of the actual birthing process, accompanied with blood and screams, followed. The telescreen blacked out again and soft music and sounds of gunfire mellowed out the entire cafeteria.

That was yesterday. After seeing that, do I want to eat? Even now? I stir my tomato soup with my fork and imagined a baby's head, wet and sticky, pushing out of the bowl, the ugly, little wrinkly thing. I think about afterbirths. I push the bowl aside.

Two tables away, a plump, fair-haired woman is heartily eating a chicken leg dipped in hot oil. She makes loud noises as she shovels rice and beans into her mouth and smacks her lips. Her hair shines in the weak fluorescent light. Her comrades twitch their noses but otherwise don't react. No envy, no jealously, at least not outwardly displaying in front of the telescreen. The telescreen says, "Carriers must eat more than our affiliates because not eating enough will result in the lost of a baby, our future." I don't know if the telescreen is telling the truth or not but most are reluctantly convinced. _Doublethink._

The waft of chicken reaches my nose. The sodding preggo bint, at least Julia has enough sense to eat in a separate room. I swallow and lick my lips, as do everyone else in the room. This is the first time the Party has flaunted what a Party member can't have but want openly and without discretion. I wonder what reaction _they_ want from us.

In my head, I'm gorging on the fair-haired woman's luscious thighs which had been dipped in black sauce and sprinkled with salt and pepper. Her blood drips from her chin; I lick her lips and taste Victory Gin. I eat every part of her except for her stained hand and a single eyeball.

In reality, I push my lunch away and stumble out the grey double doors with a hand over my mouth. Usually, this action would Vaporize me the next day, but I've learned not to fear death if it doesn't come on schedule. I was six feet under a long time ago.

Outside, the clouds watch with their Big Brother faces and the rich mustache above the lip and they stay unmoving.

You are not what you eat.

You are not what you fear.

You can't be what others tell you that you are…

I anticipate death; I eagerly wait for it like the Proles to a rocket bomb. Because I want death, _they_ can't give it to me. Only when I adore the Party can _they_ be allowed to act via bullet to the back of my head; it's a foolproof way of survival: _doublethink._ I'm entitled to mock the system and I'm expecting _them_ any day at any time.

_Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement's,_

_You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's,_

_When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey,_

_When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch. _

Something has to be fundamentally wrong with me, if I want to relive the experience of Room 101 again. It's the feelings that the Ministry of Love creates, not necessarily love, but lust, an additive that you keep coming back to. I suppose it's an original kink of mine because nobody else I've spoken to seemed to want to be Vaporized. I don't remember ever getting aroused over sado-masochism. But then again I never met anyone else who already endured the experience besides Julia. And Julia… is coping in her very special nymphomaniac way that's considered acceptable in the Party.

I'm walking outside. In my hand is a newspaper written in semi-newspeak. I'm browsing the columns: there is this article on rhymes, talking about how rhymes and poems make people happy.

Sock. Mock.

Clear. Fear.

Skill. Kill.

So on and so forth.

Another Wormhole-mob pops up on a nearby neighborhood. These days, I take back alley ways and stomp through week old puddles that sweet, pungent smell of rotten melons. Distant sounds of glass breaking quickly follow the soft chants that the walls mute.

Mute. Puke.

I think that might count as a half-rhyme.

This is the third one this week, it used to be once every three weeks…

Ever felt an upwards spiral plummeting in your stomach? That means that your society, maybe not the one you have liked by any stretch of the word, but the one you lived in for the majority of your life, is about to crumble. Recall O'Brien's confidence that Big Brother will never fall. He's wrong.

I'll give the Party maybe five years at most before its complete destruction, and then maybe a couple generations worth of time to pick up the pieces and rebuild. By then, I hope we all learned a lesson and perhaps gained more understanding in human mob mentalities. A human mob is a massive organism, a feral, terrifying, self-destructing monster. Wormhole.

I turn the corner and nearly run into a screaming outer Party member who runs in the opposite direction of the noise. I step to the side of a bleeding unconscious teenager. The mob is a safe distance away, alive and well. Sheep, my mind helpfully supplies. (When sheep get sucked in, they morph into mutant amoebas.) "More! More! More! More!" That's what the Parsons children chanted when they were toddlers, watching their first hanging of the dangerous Eurasians. The mob has gained intelligence since the first time it was formed. The old word would be 'Evolution.' At my feet is a bleeding sheep; I poke the teenager with my roll of newspaper, the teenager does not stir.

If he doesn't move in ten minutes, his head will be blasted into the filling of Shepherd's Pie. I sigh. This will be Winston Smith's good deed of his life…

I check the boy, older than fifteen, younger than twenty, no broken bones, no internal bleeding. I throw him over my shoulder and (don't look back) walk to the nearest building, which turns out to be a familiar looking antique shop. I see dirty windows and dirty bricks and scruffy curtains. A little brass bell ring as I push the door open. Nostalgia. I breathe in. Welcome back Winston.

Hello Mr. Charrington. Again.

What are the chances? White hair, harmless looking, he even has the senile eyes- don't let it fool you, he's part of _them._ I look away and dump the sheep onto an historic chaise, staining it with red. It doesn't matter; true history is false in Mr. Charrington's eyes. Mr. Charrington knows that.

"…Smith."

Lock. Sock. Mock.

Better. Container. Failure.

I glance out the window: the Wormhole-mob shifts down the street to the opposite shop _Maller and Co._ Stones shatter windows; someone had thrown a torch into the complex, the mobs storms in, shouting, "More! More! More! More!" In the riot, there are no individuals, there are no leaders. I pulled the curtains down. The room receives a yellow sheen. The shouting softens as if it is happening underwater.

"Do you know how this all started, young man?" Mr. Charrington asks behind me, his voice is like a hand petting me down from my scalp to mid-back.

_Do you know how this all started, young man?_

Yes. A small trigger: Chaos Theory or the Butterfly Effect: chose one according to your desires. The Proles were restless enough as is since forever; they only needed one spark to set off at the precise time in the right circumstances. Everything had to add up perfectly into a beautiful occasion, that occasion was weeks ago. The spark? No one might know for sure: a drunken bar fight like the one I had with Parsons where enough people were watching close enough to join, a seemly innocent argument that attracted too many bystanders, an absentminded push or a shove?

Park. Spark. Mark.

Does it really matter what was the small flame if it's only important to know that it set off a raging firestorm?

"Horrifying behavior. Ought to be remedied immediately." Charrington grunts. "This is the problem with our nature, Smith, look at them." I feel Frenzy in abstract form, tinted yellow around the edges like an old photograph. "Look at them. If this is our base, then what can we build upon it?"

I push back the curtains to get a peek; _Maller and Co. _burns in sync with the sunset at its back, the window panes dissolving the colors of fire to the clouds. The sheep on the chaise groans a bit and turns. A familiar looking red sash is tied around his waist.

"I used to fear reading _Lord of the Flies_." Charrington says, "I felt that it foretold Oceania's future if we didn't… change. That was before the Revolution." I'm careful not to look at him. Charrington surely still owns his gun. "We aren't born for peaceful civilization. We are groups and bands; we aren't unique in any way imaginable. We come in packs but not cities let alone countries. In peace, we split apart in factions, which lead to war, and to peace. War is Peace, Winston, I learned that the hard way."

I pull the curtains down again and close my eyes as a rocket bomb fell. The building shakes. We are silent for sixty-four seconds.

"Suppose there are two people on an island." Charrington says as the building shakes again, "They create a truce to aid one another. They have enough resources on the island to last them a lifetime. Yet given time, inevitably, they will fight." The sheep moans again. The old man's voice whispers, "Greed drives us to mutual destruction. Do you know what's preventing the inevitable chaos?"

I walk out. I head home.

_Do you know what's preventing the inevitable chaos?_

Yes, I know what Charrington wanted me to reply: a supreme figure, one that has undisputable authority to bring respect and obedience to all who serve this being. Some call it God, others call it Big Brother. It doesn't matter if he exists or not, he is a symbol that Humans can't achieve self-determination, they are simply too 'human', too 'mortal', too tainted. It doesn't matter if you know subconsciously that you follow the wishes of a man whom you see only among the clouds and posters, too flat to touch, immovable, unreal. A handlebar mustache and chiseled features: that's your God, that's who you are. You are what you worship. The Party is Big Brother.

I walk up the stairs. I enter my flat. I stop at the door.

O'Brien is sitting on my chair, his shoes on my floor, hands on my desk, and fingers around my pen. He says, "Hello Winston. It's time."

I feel pain in the back of my head.

Black.


	6. Interrogating in Silver

Author's note: is the only place where I can experiment with writing, _meaning serious experimentation_. For that, I'm grateful. Some lines are taken from Fight Club. There are references to _Plato's Republic_.

Warnings… eventual (subtle) slash (O'Brien/Winston) and mentions of sexual content.

_**1985**_

"People of ages past once speculated that time is a human perception. In a realm of truth, it does not exist. Ergo, all of our five senses are lying to us." His words are pick-axes to my head, a missile to a neighborhood. You're strapped into a metal chair, cold from disuse, staring across a table laminated by unholy silver-white lightings. Across the table, two arm-lengths away, O'Brien steeple his fingers; his eyes were black; shadows hid half of his face. "Can it be possible that the whole world is false? That we grow in caves and believe that shadows of objects are true and not mimesis? Why are you here, Smith?"

To lie. To die. To sleep. What do you want me to say?

My physical body was held up by strings that had all grown limp. I haven't slept in a long time; I don't know how long, I just know that every time my eyes start to close, someone kicks my back, or punches me from my blind spot. I lost a lot of weight, judging the gauntness of my wrist. It's a pity that the metal table is unable to reflect myself: a skeleton of Goldstein dripped in beige wax that once smelled of factory peaches. I sighed. Someone shuffle behind me, moving closer. I tense. O'Brien raises a hand. The shuffling stops. O'Brien smiles lightly, "I'm sure you remember the last time you were here."

Yes.

"Do you know why you are here again?"

Because I talked to Mr. Charrington.

Pain. My face slid across the table, leaving a trail of saliva, sweat, and blood. I chip another front tooth; I can feel the small enamel rolling from one side of my tongue to another, a triangular pyramid the size of a fly. "Wrong." O'Brien looks sorely disappointed; I bow my head in shame. I notice that my pants are soiled but not with my own body fluids. I must have fell down somewhere, funny that, I don't remember. "We meant to kill you after we taught you our beliefs, but you regressed back so quickly, it's now impossible to do. Such a strong mind you have, Smith, can it hold up to Room 101 again?"

Rats, I loftily tell him, remind me of my dead family.

"Oh dear." O'Brien muse aloud, "I guess we really have to kill her first."

Did you love her? I ask.

Pain. Again. I spit blood onto the table. The asymmetrical red glob is a variation of the Rorschach's Blot test; do you see a butterfly or a caved in skull? "You know you aren't supposed to ask questions like that, Winston. Why would you ask that? Do you still love her?"

Julia? You stare blankly at him.

There is a Julia-size hole in your heart. A hole that throbs in pain at the slightest touch, a hole that, over time, you've managed to patch up the best you can until the repair work looks like the wound had never been there. And then, you suddenly don't love Julia anymore. But there are triggers, metaphorical winds that send the patch off its hinge and revealing the gaping door for _them_ to see. But even though there is a Julia-sized hole in you, it's no worse then what O'Brien had done. He obliterated, annihilated, _vaporized_ you. O'Brien is a whirlwind who leaves such carnage that you don't know where to start picking at the pieces. The best you can do is to glue and tape them back but it's a shoddy job at best and when you examine your work, you see a broken reflection. The worst part is that he believes that he's doing it for the greater good.

The love between a man and a woman is nature's call, as normal as sleeping and going to the water closet. Things that you have been denied since you've entered the Ministry of Love. Humanity is nature's antagonist, nothing in the Party's beliefs are naturally given. Instincts are suppressed; you turn into programmed robot without the lobotomy. To you, once upon a time, Julia was the hope of a new generation of independent thinkers… until the hope died away when you realized that all she wanted was sexual freedom. So if you don't love Julia, who do you love?

You can't remember how you felt towards your mother or your sister when they were still alive.

Thinking of your mother tears at you like no other pain imaginable simply because it has been with you since your were ten. The memory is sealed and designed to last forever like heirloom portraits: a blue eye, a bloody hand with chewed on nails, an endless sea of rats. That is guilt, not love.

Your mother and sister also remind you of chocolate. Chocolate also reminds you of O'Brien.

Julia is nothing. You say. Nobody is anything.

She's one person in a billion in the world, an unassuming grain of sand on the English coastline, a blade of grass no taller than any other on a meadow. "There is no such thing as individuality, Smith." You reckoned that Mr. Charrington had told you that at some point in the past but you are unable to recall when or where or why. Maybe it was before Julia, maybe it was after. Either way, you don't know why you only remember this now. There was a couch and a table and tea in a flavor that you've never tasted before but are pleasantly surprised with. The walls were mauve; someone had told you that mauve is calming. Mr. Charrington had shaken your shoulders at the beginning of every sentence. "You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else."

You are not your job.

You are not your origins.

You are not the contents of what you own.

You are not your navy-blue, hideous overalls.

You are the backwaters of historic society, the feces that come out of assholes, the lobotomized citizens of the modern world.

"Julia," O'Brien points out, "at least was useful."

I'm sure. The sex must be fantastic.

I get punched again for that remark.

There must be cameras in this room somewhere. I must be pissing off a lot of people right now. Someone hissed angrily behind me and cracked their knuckles. The sound echoed off the round walls and I resist the urge to catch the eye of the faceless guard, the third wheel. I search the corners of the room and found an inconspicuous hole at the side O'Brien's head the size of an eyeball. Ah, a camera. I give the hole a crack of my bloody smile and I laugh.

It's not working anymore isn't it? I wheeze out; why don't you just kill me? I'm ready and waiting.

"You defy Big Brother, Winston." O'Brien looks at me like a reduced specimen that has enough vitality for one last lab test. "For that, we can't allow you to die." I frown because I can't read his face.

You mean I defy you, O'Brien. I don't stop smiling. I still love Big Brother, I always loved Big Brother. I'll follow him to the ends of the world, or to the ends of a paper shredder, or until he becomes a storm cloud, a harbinger of bad fortune. Big Brother is watching you, O'Brien, and he's frustrated. Because you're starting to think that you're a beautiful and unique snowflake. That's your problem.

O'Brien says nothing.

I continue. You're not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

It's only after we lost everything that we are free to do anything.

We are free to spit into the eyes of God.

I lost everything a long time ago.

There is semi-awareness in me that I'm not all there, due to the lack of nature's rules in me. I can't feel the binds around me, nor can I appreciate the iron taste between my teeth. I like to think that my thinking has dumb down to the level of a ten year old, back when my mother and sister were still alive, but that's too wishful. My mind is a full blimp and there are two tender hooks between it and the sky. My pain is almost gone. I'm in the zone for an outer body experience; I'm witnessing a movie that is what I see out of my own eyes, sitting on the roof of the car and eating snacks. I can refer to myself in third person and identify with every single fiber and every single emotion I have.

I am Winston's complete lack to give a shit.

If I cock my head to the right, I can almost imagine the fluorescent lights dancing like will-o-wisps in the infinity sign.

Definitely. Infinity.

Someone punches me. Again.

"What if I accuse you of thinking the same thing?" O'Brien's eyes aren't black, but grey in the light, he's leaning forward and I can smell his breath, strong wine and strong foods, most likely dipped in hot oil, but he isn't pregnant. His face is a porcelain doll; they only blink every two minutes and sometimes turn their heads when you aren't looking. I take my time to admire the sleek design of my chair and run my hands over the edge of my seat, smooth and pristine. I note that _they_ really outdid their soundproofing of this room. If all three of us hold our breaths, we will not be able hear anything except for the buzzing in our ear that's present whenever there is such a silence.

Then, I say, self-improvement is masturbation.

Fascination. Masturbation.

I get punched, same spot; I groan. O'Brien coolly says to the guard, "That's enough Perkins. You have seen that it obviously has no effect on this… Traitor."

Good cop, bad cop.

Perkins? James Perkins? I ask. He's the man with the mole just beside the corner of his mouth? I saw him a week ago; he came in at the Two Minutes of Hate.

No response. I take that cue to continue.

He doesn't look like he will ever amount to much, reminds me of Parsons, but he can't know that because we all know that he hates Parsons with a passion. During the Two Minutes of Hate, he threw a mug at Goldstein but it missed the entire picture by a meter. Parsons had laughed at him; Parsons' cup smacked into Goldstein's eye. He HPerkins screamed in the same falsetto that the telescreen gets whenever it gets a glitch. I laugh. He's just a fat whale, like Parsons, but don't tell him I said that. You would think that Big Brother is so unhappy for him because he will never become anything. He's the dirt at the bottom of my grey boot; he is useless in about eve-

Sharp pain at the back of my neck.

I am Winston's unconscious self, slumped over the smear of my own blood, saliva, and sweat.


	7. Victorian Chamber

Author's note: Shout out to _Very Potter Musical _and its long awaited sequel and _Final Fantasy - Distant Worlds._ I love you Nobuo Uematsu!

Warnings… eventual (subtle) slash (O'Brien/Winston) and mentions of sexual content.

_**1985**_

I stroll through a hallway decorated in windows and doors with the geometric touch of Art Deco. At the end of the hallway was a mirror. As I walked toward the mirror, I see O'Brien at the same pace walking closer… and then we both stop, a foot apart. O'Brien reached out and shattered the mirror, his arm came through the two-dimensional image and clasped around my throat. I can't breathe.

I wake up. O'Brien lets go and steps back, satisfied, "I'll give you a minute or two to settle down." He gestures in my direction; I look down and notice the tent in my overalls.

I am Winston's painful humiliation.

"Erotic asphyxiation, also called aphyxiophilia or hypoxyphilia. Before the Revolution and the rise of the Party, there had been reports of couples who hold their breaths to reach greater sexual arousal, but usually those reports surface when there is an accidental fatality." O'Brien looks out the window, from my vantage point, I can see the Southern Town Square where Traitors are executed and the rope and trapdoor apparatus, "In other cases," O'Brien continues relentlessly, "At public hangings, some male victims developed an erection, sometimes remaining after death."

I take a moment to recover. The room looks like an old version of a monarchy royal hall, with the archways, marble floors, lush carpets, and red curtains framing windows that loom, the type that the Party condones. Red is the color persona non grata of IngSoc. I feel the urge to laugh but I cough out more blood. A woman was singing in the corner, in the corner was an enlarged flower standing upright on a box in full blossom.

"Phonograph." O'Brien supplies.

_God, save our gracious Queen_

_Long live our noble Queen_

_God, save the Queen;_

_Send her victorious_

_Happy and glorious_

_Long to rein over us_

_God, save the Queen._

"Do you remember this song? My traitor father used to sing it to me before the Glorious Revolution." O'Brien says with his back against the window. I couldn't see his face due to the light behind contrasting the whites and blacks, he looks two dimensional. "Aphyxiophilia and this," he waves a hand to the phonograph, "and many other triggers are reasons why human instincts can't be trusted. It's the Party's job to suppress them."

Human instincts made Perkins maul me.

"I must admit I admire your technique." O'Brien laughs, "You've done a number on Perkins without even touching him, even taking Perkin's pathetically weak will into account. You would have made an excellent Inner Party member. Pity, hmm?" O'Brien is a statue, a representation of all silver-haired men in London; old but powerful. Cords pulled me back against my chair, at least its plush this time and not metal. "There's another mob, coming our way." I can't hear them but I can see people waving torches and blunt instruments, squeezing their way down back alleys towards us. I can force myself to imagine that what I'm hearing is what they're saying. I wonder what they're shouting; it seems to be full sentences. I pull against my restraints; O'Brien even tied my legs to the chair.

…_May she defend our laws_

_And ever give us cause_

_To sing with heart and voice_

_God, save the Queen. _They sing and then repeat.

Is this how I'll die? I ask.

O'Brien looks surprised at the admission, "Of course not, Smith. At this point, so many of the Thought Police's plans have changed regarding you. I'll never kill you." He says that with so much honesty that it terrifies me. The building shakes. A window from another building blows out, a man, Prole, jumps out and into the crowd beneath, more Proles follow his lead. Two at a time, sheep fling themselves out of two and three story windows, impaling themselves needlessly upon the pikes beneath. "Do you know why they continue to behave this way when it's obviously not to their fortune?"

Mutton and Lamb chops and kabobs. I hold my tongue.

I hold my nose too: I smell of months old stench of human filth.

When your entire life is controlled by a higher being, sometimes the only way to have some semblance of control is to decide when you want to die. _They_ prevent that among Party members, but _they _can't watch over every single Prole. Julia had called it "Desperation, as if you want to imagine her," she glanced at the red-armed Prole woman, "to suddenly crack and kill all her children because she isn't suppose to." Julia had turned around and kissed me full on the lips, "Maybe she'll kill herself, because that's the only thing she is able to do." Between sex, Julia is surprisingly scholarly. Proles number about eighty percent of the population of Oceania, a statistic that is so frustratingly and enticingly big. If they could pull their heads together, so many hidden dreams could be fulfilled.

"There's a difference," Julia had admonished, "between revolution and anarchy." I didn't think so, but I didn't answer, I had only kissed her back.

I don't know, I say. The building shakes again, the phonograph is still singing and repeating and repeating and repeating. God, save the Queen. God, save the Queen. God, please save me.

"You're lying." Closing his eyes and pinching his nose bridge, O'Brien says. I shrug, he can't see me shrug.

_First they come to light you to bed, and then they'll bring out the chopper to chop off your heads. _

O'Brien turns sharply, his eyes are black and I think he'll finally give into his urges and give me a beating. That's right, O'Brien, lose yourself to your emotions and your thrice damned human instincts. And when you fight, I'll make sure to lose so that you'll win physically but lose emotionally to yourself. Human control is going to the dogs… or should I say sheep? Another explosion rocks the chamber so hard that plaster bits sprinkle onto us. Then one side of the roof collapsed under rotting infrastructure. It might be asbestos; I sneeze. It smelled of corpses.

I learn that _they_ hide bodies coated in a green-yellow liquid in the upper floors.

I am Winston's green bile and insuppressible gag reflex.

Years back, when I was still eating lunch with Parsons, a rumor had gone around the bend about starving rats jumping into the meat grinders to die with full stomachs. There had also been rumors about everything going into the grinder from hands, accidentally, to metal ladles, also accidentally. I ate my lunch none-the-less. At the bottom of the bowl was a tooth big enough to be a child's baby teeth. I had taken the tooth out and slipped it into my pocket for further examination.

When I had gotten home, I realized that the tooth fell out of a hole in my pocket. I spent the rest of the week wondering if I had imagined the entire ordeal.

I am Winston's growing instability.

My whole life is one fat dream, thick as a pillar, with red arms, singing nonsense tunes and whipping wet diapers to the air.

"We are in the second floor of the Ministry of Love, watching as the world crumbles to our feet." O'Brien whispered, ghosting the glass with his fingers. "It sounds quite romantic."

I close my eyes and imagine calming effects: fishing, woods and forests and a bird, sex with Julia, catharsis, playing with my mother and sister.

"Listen to me, Smith."

…Little board games always made my sister happy. I recall Chutes and Ladders and chocolate; laughter all around and a bright sun heating our bones. My mother's eyes used to shine in those days.

O'Brien's grip on my wrist is painful. The building shakes, someone pounding on the entrances downstairs. I open my eyes and see his Eastasian butler, servant, standing on the borders of the shadows with a note in his hand. His clothes impeccably straight and clean, his face is set in stone, he takes after his master in that fashion. What's his name?

Mike… Mitch… Marvin…

Regardless of the literally painful grasp, I try again to retreat to my own paradise; after all, any dream is better than reality. At nights, the night before some nations declared 'hostilities' on other nations, before my sister was born, my mother would sit by my bed and recite passages from a thick tome_._

_My sentence is for open war; of wiles More unexpert I boast not: then let those Contrive who need, or when they need, not now._

In the end, I had asked her what she was reading. She told me, while petting my head, "Words, words, words, Winston. Just words."

Rocks shattered the window at the far end. I hear the sheep roaring. I blink.

A cloth is pressed against my nose and mouth; I try to push against my restraints. I twist my head in protest. Someone holds my head in place, "Shh… shh… Relax." The building trembles. I breath in.

Sour. No.

… Sweet.

Like Julia.


	8. Unmovable Down

Author's note: Four pages a chapter; I think I can finish this. …I know I can finish this! (Cue fist-pump!) The ship dismantling tragedy was a bit exaggerated but true.

Warnings… eventual (subtle) slash (O'Brien/Winston) and mentions of sexual content.

_**1985**_

I'm noticing a pattern in my ever instable life; all that fainting and waking up business must be detrimental to my mental health, but the insanity stems from the fact that I swore that I must accept death in order to live. Now look where that got me.

You are in a bedroom missing a bed; instead there is a chaise, a thick blanket thrown over its side, a plush carpet at its feet, a table at its side, a shelf behind. Everything screams luxury that's a word that they don't teach to the kids anymore, or Inner Party style. There are three high windows on the side but the curtains are drawn and too thick to allow any light through. The color scheme revolves around mahogany and gold with a double black trim where the walls meet the floor and ceiling. The door is out of your vision but you weren't too worried. On the nightstand is a plate of chocolate.

You realize that it's cold. You hide under the blanket and curl up. You reach up to push the hair away from your face and are surprised at how heavy your limbs are, so you give up and lie to your side and drift away. At different intervals, you twitch your right hand fingers and wiggle them to your amusement in a wave pattern, then in a crest, then clenching and unclenching. Flicking your wrist in semi-haughtiness, you pretend that you are dismissing someone from your sight, and can't help but feel that this is really, really funny. Drifting away from reality on fragile tether hooks; well, you always wonder how it would feel to fly. Maybe you can climb to the top of a building and step off, or be like those sheep that jumped through shattered glass.

I am Winston Smith. I am 40 years old.

That means something. Right?

The door opens; I close my eyes. The chaise shifts to accommodate the extra weight. "I know that you're awake, Winston." The smell of food that is usually reserved for the Carriers, like chicken dipped in hot oil, registers "Aren't you hungry?" I shrink back into the chaise and stare at the full plate, my stomach begins to bawl at its abysmal emptiness. When was the last time I ate? Before the interrogation sessions? Before I was taken into the Ministry of Love?

I twist up and try to sit and fail. O'Brien pushes me back down, "your ribs are still trying to heal."

When did my ribs…

O'Brien spears a piece of meat with a fork and holds it up, "Don't you remember? Perkins would be disappointed if he learned that you forgot about your own injuries. You already lost too much weight, your muscles are degenerating. That's why I'm here. Open up." I open my mouth and taste juices and spices that I had long forgotten stringy, chewing texture. O'Brien lifts an eyebrow, "Not worried that I'm poisoning you?"

I noisily swallow. Don't care.

I am more worried about the blanks in my memory. It's been more than thirty years since I've tasted meat cooked in this way and not blended together with a mash of everything else. O'Brien is using actual silverware to cut the food.

He holds the impaled meat out, I grimace, he doesn't let up, and I reluctantly open my mouth again, chew, and swallow. O'Brien looks too pleased for me to feel safe. I am Winston's growing uncertainty.

O'Brien is a clear cut riddle in a painting by Renoir, the only thing defining my hazed life without a definition itself. I don't even know his given name. He comes in the form of shocking white hair and sharp features with the age of wisdom appearing anywhere between 50 and 70 years old. The only part of him that's dark is the shadows cutting across his face and the black eyes that hold resemblance to dual piercing spears. He smells of coffee, the sort that precedes the sense of déjà-vu.

I ask him, have I seen you before? I mean, before my last Vaporization at Room 101, before that, maybe years before, have I seen you?

O'Brien doesn't answer; he shakes his head in negative. Liar. Liar. Liar. I eat green leaves, orange carrots, and rust-brown meat. I then wash it all down with water and three different pills. My eyes begin to drift. He begins to sing a song, reverberating bass tones bounce off walls.

_Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement's…_

"Tell him," the voice of Julia muses in the back of my mind, "That I would love to fuck him and that he should consider it as an honor since he'll be my first Inner Party member. You know the Inner Party members aren't as holy as they make out, Winston." Her ghosting breath brushes against my ear.

I ask O'Brien if he could stop singing. It was a nice tone, really, and maybe he could start the recordings on the telescreen instead of the yellow voice that currently dominates the media, but can you please stop singing now?

"Why?" Such an innocent question; you are unable to see which is the right answer.

"Tell him, 'Because you're not my friend.'" Julia makes a moue and kisses the air, "Tell him, 'You would've let the rats eat my eyes if it was the only way to have me agree with you.' Try to gauge his reaction." Try not to mind the extra voice in your head. Honestly, you should be happily surprised that this didn't happen sooner. "He's the enemy and you're in his grasp. Cat to a mouse. A wolf to a sheep. Aren't you going to do something, Winston?"

I am Winston's shattered peace of mind.

Julia is a new manifestation of my guilt whispering all of the 'would-haves' and 'could-haves'. The real Julia is unofficially riding on another obese Outer Party Member with her eyes closed in ecstasy. "Would you rather have unlawful stability or anarchy, Winston? Pick your poison before it picks you." My Julia is still in her late twenties with rouge amateurishly applied to her cheeks and tastes like coffee and chocolate (like O'Brien but I'm not suppose to remember that.) The real Julia is fat and ugly on the inside.

I reword Julia's statement to O'Brien.

Ringing silence.

I close my eyes as rough hands start rubbing my scalp, multiple small circles massaging the skin. If I am a cat, I would be purring, but I'm not so I settle for the same blasting silence. The feeling of déjà vu welled up again, fast approaching the surface. This exact same event, featuring the same people and the same room, had to have happened before, I'm sure of it. Somewhere in the past, whether months or years past, history had repeated itself. I keep silent.

O'Brien says, low baritone, "So the Proles have their first taste of anarchy, what can they make of it? It's a taste, nothing more, but it's too tantalizing for them and none of them know better. We usually stop them from knowing anything at all, but somehow, we failed."

I open my eyes and inform him, "The hope was the Proles."

He says, "The hope will never change from the Proles."

I shake my head, "To the Party, they are a machine made up of little parts, thoughtless animals. Even now, they're senseless sheep. This machine is malfunctioning." I take O'Brien's hand and trace the joints of his fingers, "Your ambitious vision is coming true."

Once upon a time, I heard a story from Parsons who swore on his wife's life that this was a true story. An Outer Party member was in charge of a sizable, around 100, amount of Proles whose job was to dismantle old ships, tugboats, warships, submarines, old merchant boats, and barges, anything that floats on the sea.

One day, the supervisor gave his employees a fifty year old ship and told them to get to work. The hull was in such bad shape that no one trusted the stairs or the built in ladder, so they lowered a Prole in via thick rope to take inventory of the cabins. After an hour passed and the Prole didn't reply, they decided to lower another Prole to investigate why the first Prole was taking such a long time in responding. Another hour passed and they sent down another Prole… and another… and another… and another… till finally the Party member supervisor had the sense to scratch his head with the pen and mutter, "Wait a moment…"

Carbon monoxide: the silent killer, colorless, odorless. The assassin that you don't know exists comes to slip a knife between your ribs in a way that you don't even feel it till you start to tire… to lie… to sleep… Sheep: the lot of them; sheep: our only hope against Big Brother. Each sheep walks innocently to the slaughterhouse, even being so kind as to queue up outside the doors, unsuspecting, naïve, terribly naïve.

Feeling religious enough to pray for a miracle? I'm not.

"Do you think that it's in human nature to realize what's wrong when they don't even know what's right?" I ask, eyes sleepily half close. Rough fingers restart their ministrations on my scalp. I turn my head in his direction to grant better access to pleasure. Fingers coax my mouth open, a small bit of chocolate explodes in my mouth, I hum in happiness. The taste is cool water on a hot desert day, a warm bed in a winter storm, the best luxury food after a famine. I can go on.

"Is the instinct grained into us?" O'Brien murmurs, "At our most primitive, we wished for shelter and food. Nothing else would matter, its how all other animals operated."

In the age of pre-civilization which O'Brien describes, it was an everyday occurrence to see your sister's eyeball and your mother's hand being chewed on by a scavenger. It would be normal for sheep in a snowstorm to seek shelter and walk into a cave where a predator waited, picking them off one by one as more sheep entered, completely ignorant of their dead comrades. I wish that my food would come fresh and walk onto my plate without complaint, but I think that's metaphorically what's happening now.

Ha ha. Even sheep have comrades.

Even sheep can turn into angry mobs and burn down a respectable patch of the city-forest. I wonder how the adventures of the Wormhole-mob fare. Has it died down? Did _they_ finally get fed up with the blatant freedom and demolish the immediate Prole communities with rocket bombs?

I ask whether I'll ever go outside again.

"Be quiet, Winston."

I'm fully awake again. O'Brien stares back, daring me to rebel. I open my mouth.

"I said _be quiet_."

I falter.

_Here comes a light to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head._


	9. A Discussion

Author's note: This story is made solely for my own entertainment. It was either this fic or a fic on Naruto's messed up psychology trips with Inoichi, semi-AU… right. I think people would have like the latter one more, but I like _1984_… And _Fight Club_…

Warnings… twisted slash (O'Brien/Winston), language, semi-brainwashing.

_**1985**_

The sole light fixture in the room is hanging from the high ceiling, faux-antique chandelier with upwards to twenty light bulbs. The curling, twisting design with iron leaves that come off the decoration at the right angles, aesthetically pleasing in every way, casts neutral light in every direction. It's impossible to tell what time it is.

"Circadian rhythm," O'Brien offered during his last visit as he held a glass of diluted wine to my mouth. "Natural cycles." I drank it and gagged; it was still too strong.

I'm sitting upright in the chaise, testing my weight on my legs, before I limp, stumble, crawl, to the middle of the three windows on the far wall. Expecting to see the outside world, sunlight and clouds with Big Brother faces, I push back the heavy curtains and… I recoil.

Shit. Fuck.

"Enjoying yourself?" O'Brien's dry voice asks, cutting sharp.

I'm on my knees, touching the glass panes in horror, before me is a mocking, solid wall of brick, dusty red, brown, and orange. You're in prison. You're in a prison where the color scheme revolves around mahogany and gold with a double black trim where the walls meet the floor and ceiling. Three windows which are all fake, laughed at my expense.

Hey Winston, little, useless, Winston, you little sheep, you… If you try hard enough, I'm sure you can summon the strength to break the glass. Then breaking through our barriers secondary brick layer should be a piece of cake.

"Winston?" O'Brien is hovering over me uncomfortably close. "Winston?"

You're in prison. You're a little canary in a golden cage that doesn't match your plumage, to bright, glittering, and cold. As a canary, you work for miners who lower you down to the caverns to see whether you would survive in the unknown tepid air. Carbon monoxide or other hazardous gases: yes or no, live or die?

Large hands turn me around so I'm leaning against a hard surface, I slump forwards, and the hands push me back. "A panic attack, Winston? I'm not impressed." Low baritone voice, low enough to feel in the lower parts of the spine and (dare to say it?) husky. The hands gripped my shoulder painfully. For a second, I can see white hair, an aged face, and black eyes… then I retreat.

Your prison is the world where the three governments which have all the same ideologies and policies are at war with one another simply because they can, simply so they can control their people. Every country has Proles. Goldstein is right; Big Brother is wrong. Every country must have a Winston. I'm Oceania's Winston, with my own duty to do what a Winston is suppose to do, and if I can imagine it, I can make the brick wall disappear to reveal wide green pastures and a shimmery sunset and blue oceans, however Mother used to describe it from books that doesn't exist anymore. Human perception could be reality to the human if one sees it relative to said human.

"Look at me." Far, far away, at the end of a black-grey tunnel is a circle of light, sending out streaking beams of light, growing ever smaller. Sounds are miles away. "Dilated pupils, rapid breathing… Winston, can you hear me?" I cough. Can you hear me? I hear the bleating of thousands, millions of sheep. Can you see me? I can't see anything. Someone was yelling for a 'Martin.' I breathe in and smell something loathingly sweet.

_Down with Big Brother. Down with Big Brother. Down with Big Brother, down with Big Brother down with big …_

I fall back to black, fall back to black bleeding into green grass and the dark woods where Julia and I had our first official meeting. I brush my elbows against twigs, dirt, and dead grass, my back is unpleasantly itchy from the bark of the tree I'm leaning on. Julia's thighs are white; O'Brien's eyes are black. In the corner, a baby girl, barely a toddler, laughs as Mother sings her songs. At the side are a playpen and two stools in a sky-blue. Scattered at my sister's feet are small books and ragdolls, worn out and well-played. Mother claps her hands to the beat; her voice is an alto, pleasant and soothing.

_I had a little bird, her name was Enza. I opened up the window and influenza._

_I had a little bird, her name was Enza. I opened up the window and influenza._

_I had a little bird, her name was Enza. I opened up the window and influenza._

My body jolts. I'm back on the chaise, covered in a blanket. My face is damp; I lick my lips, it's salty too. I live comfortably in a gilded prison. I imagine there to be vertical bars on the windows, where, if I fancy the idea, I'll turn into a madman and start violently shaking them and scream incoherently. The Party kills the unhinged, but I'm still alive.

I am Winston's giant question mark.

I turn my head to my side and am not bemused to see O'Brien sitting on a chair, gaze level to mine own. He reaches over and nudges my mouth, I open and taste chocolate, sweet, sensual, addictive. I let it melt against my tongue and take my time to savor the wave of pleasure washing over me. It takes me some seconds to recover. O'Brien's face was unreadable, despite his unsettling smile. I ask him why I'm still being held captive when a single drop of poison can undo me.

He doesn't answer.

I ask him how much time out of his day he spends wasting on me.

Again. He doesn't answer.

It's so quiet that I can hear a whine of a bug and blood pounding in my ears.

Awkward silence… I'm desperate to say something, anything, for a conversation, a companion, even a comrade. Recalling a conversation we had a long time past in the Ministry of Love, I tell O'Brien that, "You can't honestly think that repressed sexual instincts and sexual frustration can be good for IngSoc."

"It's the actual act that inspired our lesser comrades to seek a better lifestyle." O'Brien smoothly replied.

"You can't get rid of an instinct, it's not natural."

"I beg to differ." O'Brien pushed a small carrot into my mouth. I could feel his thumb brushing against my li-, "Remember that talk about our scientists repressing the orgasm? If it's not enjoyable, they won't feel a reason to commit the act." I wonder about the 'they.' "Not even your past lady friend will feel the want."

"Julia?"

He made a dismissal noise. "A disgrace."

I shake my head, "After generations and millennia of instinct, you… you…" I grimace as he offered a piece of beef, "You won't get away with it. Our comrades won't identify the problem, but it'll always be waiting on the cusp of realization. It'll only take a single person to speak out loud."

"And if that person was to never exist."

"I'm still here."

"Not out there."

"Why am I still alive?" I retorted. No answer. "O'Brien. It's human nature to find out what's wrong. It's not natur-"

"The Party is not natural." His infinite patience is about to crack.

Great job, Winston. Thank you Winston. I would like to thank the Academy for this award…

"Natural versus unnatural. That's where everything matters?"

"Is humanity natural, Winston?" He's stroking my hair, he's touching my face, my… my lips, he's feeding me dinner and chocolate. My mind is a mile a minute, racing, racing…

"…sometimes…"

"So what will be natural in humanity?" Amusement. I try not to get distracted.

"Freedom."

"And slavery."

"Peace…"

"And War." Leaning over, he hisses in my ear, "They are one and the same. Hence, the Party goes by its first two rules. Do you understand?"

You hear the bleating of sheep. You are standing in rolling hills of green pastures with blue skies and white clouds.

A rough hand slips around my neck and tighten, I stare at hardened black eyes. "Don't you dare escape from me." I choke, I tug at the arm. Not another erotic asphyxiation, one was enough. No breath, little dots dance in the corners of my vision, slow dancing to the center. I want to see the memory of my mother and sister one last time.

O'Brien's hand lets go, I flinch away. Deep breaths, in and out, in and out; I curl back into the chaise, like a turtle, too scared to see if I did get aroused this time. I smell coffee on him. As his fingers trace my mouth, again, I mutter, "I've seen you years before."

His finger stops exploring. I look at the offending appendage with interest; it's so close you can bite it off.

"You said that you've been following me for seven years." I flick my eyes at him, peering at him through matted hair; he's a frozen marble statue, unreadable, unmovable. "But it's more than that, isn't it? I've seen you before. I've talked to you before…"

I would even venture a guess and say that we were close.


	10. Before the Prior

Author's note: I'm off to watch _Inception_ again because it gives me the most vivid dreams I've had in a long time, like those flying dreams that I thought had left me two years back on indefinite hiatus. It makes me so _giddy_!

Warnings… twisted slash (O'Brien/Winston), language, semi-brainwashing.

_**1985**_

When I was still young enough to retain some aesthetic masculinity and old enough to be responsible for my own decisions, I had come to the understanding that it was easy for everybody to forget, to forget the past and the wonderful, happy life that was associated with my childhood, to forget the wars and rats, to forget everything Big Brother declared that _we've been at war with Eurasia/Eastasia and don't try to question it because we've always been at war with Eurasia/Eastasia_. I couldn't forget and I didn't know why everybody else does. But at that time, I didn't think that it was _my_ problem.

I sat by the window of the Chestnut Tree Café, a place I've haunted since the beginning of the Revolution when the Party moved my living quarters to the Victory Mansions and sure to haunt for years, decades, depending on how long I'll live, to come.

My name is Winston Smith and I'm 24 years old.

My fifth shot of Victory Gin didn't taste like victory but like caked saliva and old men's breath. The telescreen, rattled and scratted, was singing little jingles of marching, marching off to what we need. I flagged the waiter and motioned at my empty glass. _You see?_ I wanted to tell the other loungers; _you don't even need newspeak to cut down English, you just need gestures and motions._ The glass was filled half-empty; I rubbed my hands together to rid them of the cold and wrung them out. My fingernails were blue.

"Expecting company or shall I sit here?" I looked up. The man was tall and broad, powerful with his hair already in the mid-stages of graying. He must have been more than 10 years older than me with eyes that were black depths, sucking in the light from his face. He was a marble statue.

"You again?" I felt disbelief and slight disgust, "I didn't think you would want to see me after three weeks."

In one smooth motion, he sat down. It would take me years to pull off that sort of grace, I glared at him and he stared back, emotionless. "You remember me?"

"You're too hard to forget, hmm?" I snarled and tried to channel the force of a rabid dog, "Especially after you were displeased with my last answer." I chugged down my sixth glass and purposely allowed much of the gin to dribble out the side. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and challenged the man before me: no response. I snorted, "Still not going to tell me your name, are you?"

My glass was refilled. The man looked at the yellow-gold liquid and murmured, "You drink and you still remember."

I ignored that statement, "You're an Inner Party member and you're trying to get yourself killed by asking me _these_ questions. What if _they_ get you?" I motioned at the telescreen, "_they_'re everywhere." I placed my hands flat on the table, it was sticky and not cleaned properly, I usually avoid touching the surface, "I'm not changing my answer: it doesn't matter what type of love it is. Any type of love is forbidden and a death sentence so you might as well forget about it."

"You are frustratingly ambivalent and vague on everything I asked you," his reply was too mild. _I frustrated you?_ I shrunk back as I nursed my drink, scowling and shivering. Last time, the moment before the man left, his eyes were black pits of malice. It brought unpleasant nightmares for the next two days. Some people at the row of bar stools look over curiously, but they were drunk and they liked to look at everything curiously as if trying to remember _what were they just doing and why were they here?_

"With those questions, it was like you're trying to court me…" I muttered and then promptly cursed my loosened tongue. I hoped that he didn't hear that. I peered through the glass at the other inhabitants and watched their bodies distort comically when they moved in the world of yellow shades. Small conversations popped out and dissipated among the room, but nobody was willing to move much. It was a lazy day. I turned back to the man and clasped my arms together, "You could be one of_ them_, testing our loyalties to Big Brother."

He gave me a look that said: _you would be dead if I was_. "You are an anomaly."

"…Thank you, comrade."

"There is no one out there like you." Flattering, that.

"What about you?"

"I am what _they_ expect me to be. You, on the other hand, remembered me."

I squinted at him; the amount of gin in my body is starting to take hold over my actions. "So I was supposed to forget, like the others. You're one of those lurkers, am I right?" I whispered excitedly, casting a glance at the other customers, knowing that if I speak about this without any other eavesdroppers, I would still be allowed to live, "Instead, in order to survive, I live in those realms that you call _doublethink_ or I like to say _athink_ because you don't _think_ about those sorts of things. That's why Big Brother runs so smoothly, right? People are supposed to forget, after a generation or so, no problems would arise."

He smiled grimly, "Machiavelli's principles."

"Sorry?"

No reply. I leaned back and crossed my arms. The man called the waiter over and said something to the waiter's ear, I saw a small packet switch hands, and the waiter nodded and retreated to the back kitchens. I swirled my drink around and imagined a small whirlpool sucking up all the yellow liquid into an extra-terrestrial dimension in the bottom of the glass. My left knee was beginning to twitch.

After a few minutes passed, faint aroma drifted from the back doors and dispelled into the room. It was strong, a universal silent warning that all Outer Party members and below were to leave the premises. The telescreen turned off on its own. Men and women, all overweight and wearing navy overalls or rags stood up and began strolling to the exit doors. I pushed back my chair to follow, but a rough hand grabbed onto my wrists and pulled me down. "Comrade? The rules?" I dryly asked.

"Sit down," the man said. "You like the scent, just enjoy it." I warily pulled my chair in, we resumed our original positions. The smell grew stronger; I took a deep breath and sighed happily. The front doors closed and the cold air lingered in the general area. My chair was uneven; the walls by the windows were a dark mahogany. The telescreen turned back on and sang.

_The sunrise is purple and red as our happy blood_

_We spill for Big Brother our motivations pouring_

_Women are inside to brood_

_Men are for gold and glory._

"So." I cleared my throat. "Last week, I slipped into this antique store; the owner told me his name was Mr. Charrington, he seemed nice." _He was probably one of you, comrade, you can kind of tell with these things. It's all in the eyes, that is, if you can see them. Old men like Mr. Charrington could pretend that they have cataracts and they squint their eyes shut but Mr. Charrington only did that a second after he saw me. Do you know each other?_ "He asked for my opinions of the Proles."

The man made a lazy gesture. _Go on._

"And I said that they are all sheep." I finished my drink and pushed the glass off the table where it shattered on the floor, bits and pieces landed on my shoe. "Each Party is a herd of sheep and a single wolf, no sheep is different." Mr. Charrington had taken offense at that.

"I wonder how he reacted." _So they do know each other._

"You don't want to know." The back doors opened, the waiter entered bearing a single mug with rising steam. The aroma was sharp- _was that…?_ "I told him that he's a grain of sand, not a snowflake, no matter how much he wants to be one." I flicked my wrist, "Did you hear me, comrade? You aren't a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are made up of organic trash, just like everyone else in the world except for the wolves, which was the ethereal, metaphysical being. You know him, the wolf is Big Brother. He's not even truly human."

The mug was set down before me; I look in and saw dark brown liquid with a bit of foam at the center. I ignored it and continued to talk, "The only thing that defines you is your actions. If you don't do anything, you are nothing. I'm ok with that, I like being nothing." I pull the mug closer; it warmed my fingers, "What is this?"

"Coffee."

"Drugged?" I turned the cup around and peered inside.

"Obviously," the man replied, "we placed our fast acting special concoction that we made specifically for you, unique snowflake."

"It's more potent than Victory Gin?" I sipped a mouthful, it was repulsive, "I never had coffee before. My mom did before rations ran out. This will make me forget everything."

"Suppress, not forget," he corrected, "You must drink the whole thing. If this doesn't work, then…" He trailed off. I understood.

"I'll never see you again, comrade. I'll never go through your inane questions and meetings." My visions were already fuzzy and beginning to tilt. I tipped the cup up in salute, "To sheep and Big Brother." I started drinking till I was halfway through, then I paused, laughed, and grinned widely, "To Goldstein!"

I chugged the rest down and my world spun.


	11. Therefore Going On

Author's note: Short chapter. I just don't have the ENDURANCE to write and concentrate on the same plot bunny for a long time, no matter how awesome it first sounds… Double digits: I'm trying to end at the CH.12 mark!

Warnings… twisted slash (O'Brien/Winston), language, brainwashing.

_**1985**_

_Run, run, run far, far away_

_The big bad bogey man is here to stay_

_He'll wait till you're out light and cold_

_Then he'll creep up to eat your bones._

And… time passed in a relative state of the human mind, but it's utterly fluid when it passes this chamber, I suppose I could use the possessive pronoun: mine. This chamber is mine, not O'Brien's, not the Party's, not Big Brother's, but mine and mine _alone_.

And the principal of the matter was forgive to forget, except when you couldn't forget, everything got thrown out of the window and into a brick wall because you have the curse of _remembering_. Scientists must love you. You remember everything- you remember the past of Mr. Charrington and O'Brien. You even remember when Mr. and Mrs. Parsons began living together, assigned together by the Party, toeing the line of awkwardness and breakage. I used to have dreams of Mrs. Parsons, the skeleton dripped in yellow wax, hovering over Mr. Parsons with a rusty pipe, debating on the merits and consequences of her actions. Then a drop of yellow wax would awaken Mr. Parsons; and Mrs. Parsons' decision was final, not matter how much she didn't want it. I wanted to ask Mrs. Parsons what she would regret but could never gather the courage to, especially when she began calling me over to fix her plumbing.

At first, I was terrified that she was trying to initiate some illicit affair while her husband was away, because Symes told me that women naturally get lonely and want some "naughty release and when they do those sorts of malicious actions, be sure to report her." Then I saw her children and I understood that I wasn't so much as a release as a wall.

A big, ugly, brick wall.

I finished another dinner. I lost count to how many dinners and lunches and occasional breakfasts I've had in my chamber. The silver place with rose designs on the rim and a small green trim was scrapped clean, like every other dinner, and with it was a used silver spoon, because O'Brien would never let me near a knife or fork unless he was the one holding it. I could use the spoon the gauge out my eyes, but I wouldn't die and I appreciate my sight too much for that sacrifice. O'Brien learned from the last few meetings. O'Brien learns fast.

He might possibly know me more than myself. The thought is quite unsettling. He asks me questions about myself and whenever I try to pull a reversal on him, he stays silent. If I stay silent, he starts to touch me. I really don't like it when he touches me when he's frustrated. You can only tell that he's frustrated from how hard he grips or pushes.

I've grown complacent to my place here. I admit: I've lost. I've lost because I'm complacent and I realize that I'm complacent. No actions mean that you're nothing. I'm nothing.

When I'm alone, I like to sing and make up poems and songs that the Party might feel fit to use on the telescreen. The Party loves it when the lyrics don't have any meaning.

_Silent at night, you walk to the roads of a Chestnut Tree_

_Two tall people meet, two short people leave._

_Examine the trunk and what do you see?_

_A broken heart at the base of the Chestnut Tree._

If it's silent, I hear my ears ringing and throbbing.

I used to have emotions, in the past; I used to be passionate and active, if not secretly. I used to have hope, I still do, but it's not mine nor can I view it with anything but a detached view. Where did all that go? When did that part of me start to leave? O'Brien might know, but he won't answer.

O'Brien likes to have conversations. We talk a lot and most of the time when he talks; he feeds me by hand. I like chocolate the best because it reminds me of my mother and sister, but I don't tell him that because then he won't give me chocolate anymore. I think he's slowly drugging me again, suppressing my personality into a withered husk, but I'm still here. Again, I'm too detached from my body to care. It's like my spirit is floating by the ceiling, looking down like I'm watching a movie flick of some twisted man and man romance drama.

O'Brien was the first one I know to bring up the idea of homosexuality.

I'm Winston's hollow heart.

Before, I didn't even know that it existed. That's how ideas are; they take over your body till you live by that single idea. They're parasites so that you spend the majority of your life battling the foreign plant, like kudzu vines and tree molds. It's made me paranoid but I think I have the right to feel that.

O'Brien's smart; he takes care of me, though I'm supposed to be dead. The only person I see these days is him. I don't ask how much time has passed. I don't ask about the mobs of the Party's decline of power, which I'm sure must be falling. I'm so curious but I'm not allowed to ask. O'Brien probably knows that too. I'm sure that O'Brien likes me, but I'm not allowed to ask. I want to ask him what he sees in me, but I'm not allowed to ask. He's patient too. If I remember correctly, he's been waiting for (me?) more than sixteen years.

Maybe I'm his own twisted fantasy.

There's no telescreen in the room. Do _they_ know I'm here? Do I exist outside of my own chamber?

It's all relative.

When I talk, I exist.

I talk about politics and ideals, I talk about the human ruling powers, and books, and catharsis, and psychology, and philosophy. O'Brien gives me history lessons; he knows a lot and he argues with me about his own beliefs. We like to talk about morality. We like to talk about designs and roads, Prole-life and Inner-Party-life.

I talked about my childhood; he stayed silent about his own, he liked to listen to me though. I told him about the dreams of my mother and sister and insomnia. I didn't tell him about my mother's chocolate, not now, not ever. I told him that I think I'm already dead, I only don't remember the actual dying process. I thought that this is how the afterlife will be, I'm in Limbo right now, and what do I have to do to get out? Or maybe I am in Hell, since Hell is other people. O'Brien talks to me about Hell and Limbo and Heaven.

I think O'Brien is brilliant.

He always smells like coffee. He likes to massage my legs, arms, back, scalp, and lips. He's going to go farther in, sooner or later; it's a question of "when?" He wants me to look at him when he does or else he'll start choking me. It's a slow process that happened over time, he didn't do this when the first day I was in the chamber. I think it'll progress to something even more, but I don't want to think about it. _Doublethink… Athink._ But when I do as he says, he lets me walk around the chamber, its spacious enough to fit my old cafeteria. Walking feels ok, not great, just ok.

I'm too weak. Most of the time, I lie down on the chaise and sleep and dream. I like to sleep and dream. When I dream, I'm somewhere else. Therefore, O'Brien doesn't want me to dream, he wants me to get insomnia. O'Brien is mostly unreadable. You can only get a hint of emotions by seeing how rough or gentle he's treating you.

My world narrows to the chamber, the fake windows, food, and O'Brien. I suppose you can think of O'Brien as God of my world. My world is pitiful and it's all because of him.

I hate him so much that I wish that he was dead but I can only revolve around him because he's the only one there. Sometimes I love him so much that I wish to give all of myself to him. Then I wake up from my dream of autumn leaves and green pastures and my mother and sister and I begin to cry.

I want to die.


	12. The Beginning of the End

Author's note: Last chapter! Cheers! After this, I can finally allow myself to post the long awaited 5th chapter of _Tales of a Wanderer_. A toast! I couldn't bring myself to find a first name for O'Brien, or at least, not really.

Warnings… twisted slash (O'Brien/Winston), language, and brainwashing.

_**1985**_

Ever since he could remember, he has been given clearance to knowledge of the past, to its basic forms. He was privy to true thought and was given the highest clearance to everything in the Party and he doesn't know anyone else who had the same privilege. At times, he wondered whether he was the voice behind the poster of Big Brother.

Comrade J.S. O'Brien, identification number 62372, has reached the pinnacle of his life.

Winston Smith has reached rock bottom.

O'Brien found himself repeatedly turning the idea of the man over in his mind during his work hours as he supervised everything that was going on in London. Winston Smith was an anomaly, a freak of nature, an utterly fascinating representation of a single-man population statistic. Ever since he had met the man at the Chestnut Tree Café, he had been studying him, watching his every stumble through cameras and telescreens, taking notes on how many times he _could have been_ vaporized.

His own actions were soon followed by puzzling and worrisome self-reflection upon his actions- he never thought of himself as one who can fall to obsession, especially to another man, but here he is, finding his time consumed on a common Outer Party member.

At their first meeting, albeit drunk and beautiful, Winston told him, "I could be a figment of your imagination, a persona of an emotion or frustration you're repressing deep inside and all this," his sweeping gesture knocked over more empty glasses, "is your heaven. I think you're certainly enjoying this realm of dreams, comrade. You might be the only one."

Winston was no one special. He's a danger to Big Brother and to society. He was a small parasite which had crept into a human body, which had been thought indestructible, like the Titanic. The small parasite had been looked over one too many times and nobody stopped it when it multiplied and began, slowly, systematically, destroying life from the inside out. But he was too interesting to eliminate, at least to O'Brien.

The man was clear and bright, too strong to allow Victory Gin to cloud his memories and motions, even if he didn't realize it. He is, perhaps, what man had been before the Glorious Revolution, an age that has been fading away like an aged, worn photo, or how a drawing in the dirt can disappear with wind and time.

O'Brien often wondered what was so attractive about the man, certainly not his countenance, which was average seeing as he never smiled. The Outer Party member looked worn and frayed, but still stubborn and holding on to… what… something, holding desperately onto something so that he wouldn't lose himself. His eyes were clearer than any other man or woman O'Brien had met and he spoke with understanding of reactions and instincts. Winston understood what it took to be human; he spoke of ideas long lost by the Party, ideas whose sources stemmed from Antiquity. He talked of perfection in objects, the idea of love, the situations of a wrong government and unjust laws, of trying to view perfection if you couldn't identify with the real world. At that time, he only talked to O'Brien.

"And what if you don't accept the real world?" Winston muttered during their second meeting at the Café. He didn't seem to mind the threat of being hauled off by the Thought Police. "Where would you go? Would you regret the steps you took to achieve enlightenment?"

O'Brien found himself intrigued, even if he was given in return bemusement, curiosity, then later frustration and scorn. Winston was smart in ways that no one could pin down.

That made the Party scared. A month after the second meeting, they sent him down to the Ministry of Love to be Vaporized… Only, he came out of it gaunter and frail, weathered, but still unrelenting, unchanging in what truly mattered.

This never happened before. To anyone. In IngSoc's history.

Clearly beside themselves, the Thought Police wanted to eliminate the man. O'Brien had stopped them and told them that if they did this, it would be an action of desperation. Despite all his obliviousness to his actions, Winston would have realize this and would have taken it to mean that he won in death. You have to leave him alone. The death of this man being felled by the hands of the Thought Police (Winston refused to even identify the group, thinking that a "_they," _where the listener could feel the italics, would suffice) would ruin the integrity and the stable mindset that the Police held. Any small stumble the fragile structure of the Thought Police makes would magnify to blow to epic proportions. The annihilation of Winston Smith was too risky.

O'Brien suggested taking the man into his own care to study such a unique mind and to keep him out of the public's eye. The motion was promptly rejected. Instead, Winston Smith willingly drank a powerful memory suppressant medicine, knowing the consequences and side-effects. (The man, however, didn't realize that O'Brien could have slipped the drug into gin and not into coffee, a luxury item.) Leaning over the slighter man's unconscious body, he couldn't help but whisper into an ear, "We shall meet in a place where there is no darkness."

Years passed. As he was trying to vaguely reinsert himself into Winston's new life, he appeared on the edges of the Outer Party member's life, at work, in the corridors, never initiating contact, never maintaining prolonged looks. O'Brien spent his nights collecting footages of Winston in different parts of London, in the familiar Café that he frequented, in his new home in the Victory Mansions. He watched as years passed, Winston's past rebellious personality began to rise again in forms of a journal and a young, attractive woman named Julia.

He told himself, repeatedly, day and night, that it didn't matter. Winston had always been a property of O'Brien's but it would take time for that declaration to be acknowledged. Julia wasn't anyone special, not a pretty, special snowflake. Winston was also assessing her, just as he had assessed O'Brien all those years ago between half finished glasses of Victory Gin. Julia was failing in Winston's assessment, more so than O'Brien had, because Julia was only against the Party because of her fanatical need for coitus that had clearly gone past the border between obsession and mental disorder. But Winston did see something in her: youth? Freedom?

Whatever it was, it wasn't strong enough for Winston to get interested in her post-second-Vaporization.

Winston liked to write his thoughts down, happy thoughts, sad thoughts, ponderous thoughts, etc. It was uncertain whether Winston actually knew how closely he was being monitored, but it wasn't until recently, recent as in when Winston was taken into the Ministry of Love for the third time, that O'Brien realized that he had been dropping small sheets of paper all over London in his Pre-first Vaporization and Pre-first Memory Repression days, waiting for unsuspecting hands to pick them up and read. That sort of duplicity was unnerving.

_To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone- to a time where truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink- greetings! _

_Thoughtcrime does not entail death; Thoughtcrime IS death._

_Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows._

_I understand HOW; I do not understand WHY._

_If there is hope, it lies in the Proles. Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until they have rebelled they cannot become conscious._

There was no telling how many papers were scattered in IngSoc. They were mere words written by Winston that he later also wrote Pre-second Vaporization, as if he was trying to recall and remember. And yet, this also must be the reason why Winston was so eager to forget and to drink the drugged beverage O'Brien had offered at their last time together at the Café.

During Winston's second Vaporization, O'Brien decided that whatever made Winston conscious in the world, whatever was holding him down to clarity, he was going to obliterate it. When the mob riots began, the type that couldn't be controlled without the missiles, the ones that appeared a year after the second Vaporization, O'Brien dreamed of tearing Winston into pieces, each piece still stuttering for forgiveness. He dreamed of watching the man slowly choke to death by his hands, his lips turning blue, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. The papers that Winston had dropped years ago began a spark and fanned flames into those who read them, then whispers spread through the Prole communities like a wildfire. An intangible anger simmered under Big Brother's radar. All it took was a single action, a small bar fight, a kick, and a push, a shove, to initiate the first riot for many riots to come. O'Brien was furious when he learned Winston's role in these disasters.

IngSoc was not permitted to fall on his watch.

It took nine months for Winston to struggle back to his old self, nine months, and then, apparently, a dream which led to him recalling more of his childhood memories. And so began the agonizing process of recalling an album of aged, worn photos.

O'Brien pointed this out to the Thought Police who finally relented.

O'Brien took Winston into his gilded prison and began slowly working on the man. Winston was forced to be fed, to submit to him, it fed a growing craving for a thrill of power. He offered Winston anti-depressants, to make him more compliant. He wanted Winston to only part his lips for him; he wanted Winston to talk only to him. Even then, it wasn't enough, O'Brien wanted to be closer.

He started with accidental brushes, small shakes of the shoulders, though it seemed that Winston responded better with violence… It must have been an induced habit. Winston cringed away from anything else, but O'Brien insisted and eventually the other man got used to it: strokes on the thighs, shoulders, scalp, lips, cupping the face, lining the stomach and chest through the threadbare shirt. O'Brien began to see the signs of Winston beginning to crave his touch.

When they conversed, O'Brien made sure to stay in the dominant position, directing the flow of the topics and showing his displeasure whenever his prisoner ventured onto unmarked territory. Winston learned quickly but bore it like a sulking prole child. O'Brien began to research through forbidden books for the definition of the term 'Stockholm Syndrome.'

Winston had changed, but that was expected after years had passed along with two and a half vaporizations. The man appeared unhinged but still sharp; he was a dichotomy. He was an independent thinker who was dependent on other people's affections and interactions.

Winston was unhinged. Winston liked to talk about "Julia's theories", though he didn't seem to realize that they were his own. He was quite enamored with the girl, not who she was, obese and bearing her third child at the moment, but when she still maintained her lithe body. O'Brien didn't have the heart to tell him that Julia had been shot in the back of the head three days ago, there was no need.

At nights, O'Brien tried to reason out why he was so fascinated with the man. Behind his eyelids, he envisioned the physical aspects: lips, eyes, hair, body… He wasn't alarmed when he caught his right hand creeping closer to his crotch, wanting release. He had long admitted his attraction, years ago.

Outside, the Proles were restless, wanting something so badly that they were willing to die but not knowing what it was. One could imagine how frustrating that feels. There were rumors that they were planning to storm the Ministry of Plenty in the near future. Security has been water-tight these days. The Party members were quite numb on the topic, nobody dared to approach it; the Thought Police wouldn't let them. Of course doublethink was employed graciously in these situations.

But the Proles were another matter; one can't make the Proles forget, not all of them, not at once. The beginning of the end, within a few years, the Party would fall.

Winston knew that this was going to happen.

And so, with the world crumbling at his feet, O'Brien continued his visits with the man who started this all, one whom he should've tortured and killed on principle but couldn't bring himself to. The Thought Police had long forgotten him, or at the very most, assumed that he was dead. Eventually, everybody forgets except for O'Brien, the man behind the curtains, the voice of Big Brother.

This might be Love, an emotion that the Party had been determined to stamp out for the good of IngSoc. O'Brien wasn't sure; this was a first for him. He anticipated the time when he would visit the man, he felt a hot feeling rush down to the lower regions of his stomach when his hand lay on the doorknob, he wanted to own Winston in every way possible, and he wanted Winston to adore him like he was the only man in the world.

This time…

This time he watched intently as Winston's eyes closed and his face relaxed in bliss as he savored a small bit of chocolate. When Winston's eyes reopened, O'Brien traced his thumb over his bottom lips and leaned over. The man tensed when he initiated contact, but soon relented, submitting.

The kiss was tantalizingly slow, so slow that it was almost painful. Winston's lips parted; O'Brien took advantage and forced his tongue into the other's mouth. Slowly, O'Brien became more aggressive and demanding, pushing ahead, closer, hotter. The man whined and squirmed until O'Brien slipped his hand under his thin shirt and slid up his chest. He allowed the hand to rest at Winston's side, still touching skin, drawing small circles. Winston made a low noise at the back of his throat as O'Brien pressed their bodies together…

Then the moment abruptly ended. O'Brien straightened and observed his prisoner's state- half undone and stunned, staring dazedly at the ceiling. Satisfied, O'Brien stood and exited the room. He has enough time to drag out the passion to dizzying heights; he will enjoy this as much as he can… as the world crumbles at his feet.


End file.
